Responsible Authorship
Responsible Conduct of Research
Seminar
George Mason University
2016
Jeff Offutt
Professor of Software Engineering,VSE
http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/
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OUTLINE
1. My Background
2. Authorship Rules
3. Plagiarism—What, When, How ?
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My Background
• Professor of Software Engineering (VSE, CS)
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> 165 refereed publications, H-index = 7
Editor-in-Chief: Journal of Software Testing, Verif., and Reliability
Co-Founder: IEEE Intl Conf. on Software Testing
Author: Introduction to Software Testing
2013 GMU Teaching Excellence Award, Teaching With Technology
Mason Outstanding Faculty Member, 2008, 2009
Advised 16 PhD students, 7 in progress
• Research Highlights
– First model-based testing paper (UML 1999)
– Distributed research tools : muJava, Mothra, Godzilla, Coverage
web apps
– Seminal papers : Mutation testing, automatic test data
generation, OO testing, web app testing, combinatorial testing,
logic-based testing, model-based testing
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Your Background?
How long have you been in graduate school?
Do you have a research advisor?
What is your field?
Have you published anything yet?
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OUTLINE
1. My Background
2. Authorship Rules
3. Plagiarism—What, When, How ?
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Authorship Rules
Everyone who makes substantial contributions to
the results are co-authors on papers that present
those results
All co-authors should see the papers and have
the opportunity to participate in the writing
before submission
The only exception is if a co-author
explicitly declines being listed as a
co-author
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“Substantial Contribution”
How to determine “contribution” ?
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YES
Would results be different?
Ran the experiment
Full editing rewrite (maybe)
Built experimental
infrastructure (lab, software,
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NO
Experimental subject
Grammar editing
Provide funding
Did work that was cut
during revision
etc.)
• In the room? (maybe)
Authorship must be discussed
openly, objectively, and rationally
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Authorship Rules
Two useful “rules of thumb”
1. Would the paper have been substantially
different without that person?
2. When in doubt, including someone is
usually safer socially than omitting someone
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Authorship Rules
Can I add someone as co-author
as a favor for helping me?
• Obtaining funding
• Advisor
• Boyfriend
No, that’s
plagiarism
Can I omit someone from the
author list who angered me?
No, that’s
plagiarism
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Authorship Order
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Possible ordering strategies:
Order of contribution
Alphabetical order
Contact author first
“Primary” author first, then alphabetical
My preferences:
• Students first (esp. their dissertation work)
• Order of contribution if possible
• Alphabetical
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What ordering
strategy do you
(or your advisors)
use?
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OUTLINE
1. My Background
2. Authorship Rules
3. Plagiarism—What, When, How ?
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What is Plagiarism?
“Taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing
them off as one’s own” — Oxford Dictionary
“To use the words or ideas of another person as if they were
your own words or ideas” — Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Self copying is not plagiarism
(but possibly a copyright violation)
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Types of Plagiarism
Submitting most or all of a paper as if it
Complete copying were your own
Copying key results
Claiming someone else’s results, even
with different words or unpublished
Copying unpublished work
Copying words or results
from an unpublished source
Copying sentences or paragraphs
Copying auxiliary text from related work, background, etc.
Copying figures Copying a figure from another paper
Missing quotation marks or improper
Improper quoting reference to quoted text
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Why Do People Plagiarize?
Knowingly
Desperation—They are required to publish and can’t
Lack of Ethics—No sense of right and wrong, sociopathic
Poor Judgment—They believe they won’t be caught
Advisors Did—They think it’s normal
Can’t Write—Copying text from better writers
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Why Do People Plagiarize?
Unknowingly
They don’t understand what plagiarism is
Forgetfulness—They read it, forgot, and thought they invented it
Laziness—They worked with the wrong co-authors
Ignorance—They don’t know how to write citations
Poor Planning—They are late and take a shortcut
Paraphrasing—Thinking that changing 2 words in a paragraph
makes it your own words
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Journal editors do not care why.
All plagiarism is considered as
knowing, willful, and intentional.
We have “one strike and you’re
out” policies.
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How To Avoid Plagiarism?
We are supposed to “stand on the shoulders of giants”
Understand plagiarism!
Properly reference ideas that aren’t yours
Rewrite text that you want to use—even
if your writing is not as good
Redraw figures—and be sure to reference the original!
If an idea is unpublished, either contact
the author directly or forget it
Too many references is better than too few
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Discussion
Discussion : Which of these constitute plagiarism?
1. Copying your friend’s introduction, changing a few words? Yes
No
2. Copying a figure from your previous paper?
3. Watching your classmate write a program, then going home
and writing your own program from memory?
Yes
Yes
4. Reusing terms defined in a paper you reviewed and rejected?
5. Submitting a paper to two different journals at the same time? Yes
6. Forgetting where you read something, so omitting the
Yes
reference?
7. Adding additional material to your conference paper and
No
submitting the expanded paper to a journal?
8. Copying background paragraphs from your advisor’s paper
into your dissertation?
Yes
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Contact & References
Jeff Offutt
offutt@gmu.edu
http://cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/
Three of my editorials from STVR
• Plagiarism Is For Losers
cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/stvr/25-1-January2015.html
• Who Is An Author?
cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/stvr/25-2-March2015.html
• How to Get Your Paper Rejected from STVR
cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/stvr/24-6-September2014.html
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