Memoirs of a Saudi Ph.D. student: Me a plagiarizer? No way!
What a relief! I was finally ready to submit my Ph.D. upgrade report. This upgrade is a procedure that you need to go through in some UK universities. When you are first registered, you are considered an M.Phil. student (stands for Master of Philosophy) and upon completing your upgrade you will be then considered a Ph.D. student. I had fulfilled all the requirements and submitted the final report for grading, and reaching this stage was really challenging for me after what I have gone through with my previous supervisor (please refer to the odd supervisor article) and I nearly lost a year’s worth of work. So I was there day and night at the department, working very hard to finish my upgrade in time.
It was like raising a demanding baby whose needs are never ending, so the moment I submitted it, I felt that I deserve to be awarded a Ph.D. right then and there, it was such a relief!
Usually correction and reviewing takes a minimum of four excruciating long weeks and it felt like forever, and of course I was so eager to see my results. And although I was confident that I would receive positive on my work, because I put my all my energy and heart into it, but still I couldn’t wait to hear the good news. One day, I was sitting peacefully in my office when my supervisor came to me with an expressionless face and called me in for a meeting. I was relieved because I needed to discuss things and was postponing them until after the upgrade results.
I entered his office in a bright mood and with a smile on my face, but he remained expressionless. He then looked at me and said, “Hatoon, you have passed your upgrade, but I am really upset with you.” I was shocked and confused, and I looked at him wide-eyed and inquired, “ but why? I have been behaving really good lately!” He then calmly told me “Hatoon, the fact is that plagiarism has been detected in your work by the committee.” I looked at him completely bewildered and even more confused. What he was accusing me of was impossible! This work is my baby; I spent long days and nights working hard at nourishing it! So how come they claim I had copied it?
Finally I found my voice and said to my supervisor, “No impossible! They are mistaken, we were working on this together, you know me and you know how hard I worked!”
“But Hatoon, it was copied from a research piece submitted at Lancaster University.” He replied. Then suddenly I had an epiphany and it all made sense. OMG how naive of me! What actually happened is this: After I finished my report, the only remaining part was the research context, so I referred to my Master’s dissertation and I took the research context chapter and inserted it in my work, since later I will be conducting my research on the same institution. It just made sense to me; why would I rewrite something that hasn’t changed? It’s not a novel part of my study anyway, it’s merely information about the place, and its my own work.
Of course I knew that plagiarism is considered a great academic offense here and the consequences are sometimes devastating, but it did not even cross my mind for a second. It’s my own work so I copied it without guilt. The problem was that I completely forgot the fact that my Master dissertation is now part of a big database and if I copied something — even if I copied myself — I need to properly reference it or it’s considered plagiarism. It sounds weird but that’s how it works.
My big mistake was that because I was so sure of my work, it did not occur to me to test it via software that detects plagiarism. Such software and some websites are available for students and they can check to see if there work contains any plagiarism. But I did not even think about it, because for God’s sake, I worked so hard and I know that it’s all my work!
Anyway, my supervisor then told me that he was sure that it was unintentional but I need to convince the plagiarism committee, which will call me for a meeting. Honestly, I was not nervous at all, I knew they would understand that I was not guilty. Finally, when I went to the meeting they told me this: “We understand that it’s your own work and the part you copied was a fixed part and not a novel part of your study but still it’s a work that had been submitted as a part of another course and referencing it is necessary.”
Well, I should have done that anyway, apart from saving my sophisticated postgrad image, it would have been great to site myself — “according to Kadi (2009), the research context is.....” However, as usual I was humbled, I learned my lesson, and now you know that copying your own work is plagiarism, so don’t be tempted!
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