Daughter accused of Academic Misconduct

[GreenTeaAndSympathy]

My daughter submitted her thesis and just now has been reported for academic misconduct for self-plagiarism. She told me that they have found similarities with academic papers that she wrote leading up to her thesis without attributing herself and she believes that she did this inadvertently by internalising her ideas and just reproducing them in the same way using similar wording according to her style of writing. This seems unfair (as it is essentially her own work) and she is sick with worry. We are not native English speakers and English is our second language.

According to the university website, "Self-plagiarism: using the Registered Student’s own ideas, words, data or other material produced by them and submitted for formal assessment at this University or another institution, or for publication elsewhere, without acknowledgement, unless expressly permitted by the assessment;"

I have no experience of this and don't know who to turn to for advice.

Anyone with experience of this and know how we can defend this action?
Would anyone know what she can expect as a penalty as the University has not outlined the outcome?

@GreenTeaAndSympathy

Is she a post-graduate, OP? I am assuming so. MA/MSc? PhD?

The problem with submitting a thesis which seems to be a patchwork quilt of research already evidenced in earlier pieces of work is that it means that the thesis itself is not a piece of original work, I would have said.

It may also be a question of the percentage of the content. There will always be an element of continuity in later work, for instance, if I were to submit a thesis on an element of German Literature, my tutor would recognise aspects I incorporated if I had discussed them or written about them before; she would acknowledge the inclusion of essential elements which are at the core of the subject; the problem would be if the thesis contained nothing really new and was an assembly of everything she had previously seen in my work.

Your daughter's situation is a difficult one and I would urge her to make sure that she gets in touch with her personal tutor today and perhaps ask him/her for an appointment to talk about what has happened.

If this is a PhD thesis, then repeating text from your own previous academic papers (with citation) is normally all but repeating text from another document previously submitted for university assessment ( eg an MSc thesis) is not.

She definitely needs to speak to her supervisor/ course tutor/ grad student tutor asap.

Is she in arts or science?

I thought it is okay if it is an earlier draft of the sane thing.
I am a little concerned about this though as my ds phd thesis is just pulling together published papers he has co-written over the 4 years of his PhD.He says that is fine, but I hope it is!

One angle would be to get it classified as poor academic practice, rather than misconduct, which does not have the element of intention associated with it and therefore carries less serious sanctions - so perhaps a chance to sit the assessment again, either capped or not at a pass, depending on how serious it is found to be. Have a look at the definitions of the various offences in the handbook, and then at the range of sanctions for each one to see what her best / worst case scenarios potentially are.
Set up meeting with personal tutor.
Contact Student Advice services.

There are very strict rules here I'm afraid. When I did my PhD the rule was that up to one chapter or X number of words of your thesis could include material that had already been published elsewhere, and this had to be properly cited in the work and highlighted in the accompanying documentation. This is taken very seriously and your DD needs to speak to her supervisor and the graduate school equivalent as a priority.

I would double-check this in your son's shoes because at my university and in my discipline this would have been a fail. A PhD is supposed to be a sustained body of work that presents a new perspective and piece of research within your field. Unless your son is submitting for a PhD by publication then this would raise alarm bells for me.

I'm assuming she's final year or masters rather than PhD?

I've sat on countless of these panels at lower undergraduate levels, but not for pieces of work that are this important. There's a high threshold in my school to call a panel for this stuff, so you're right to be worried.

The first thing she needs to do is familiarise herself with the university's regs and the process for investigating these complaints. She should reach out to the student union - she can probably bring a representative to the meeting (I'm assuming she'll be called to a meeting to investigate). An informal chat with her supervisor will do no harm either although they may not be allowed meet with her in the circumstances.

Then she should pull together all her notes, drafts etc that show her process and how she worked. Has she been told what parts of the thesis they're querying and can she explain her reasoning?

Grovelling and explaining that the student has misunderstood what was required is often the way to go at lower levels, but at thesis stage (whether undergraduate or postgraduate) they would be expected to have a firm grasp of academic conduct.

This would be absolutely normal in my field - write three papers, get them published, pull together with a combined introduction and literature review.

@CelesteCunningham but in that poster's son's case the papers are co-written, so not his sole work either. You can't submit co-written papers surely?

I'm guessing this will be field dependent - in this case the papers have multiple authors but the PhD student would be first author and would have driven the work.

(Should be clear that I abandoned my own PhD in the first year, but I'm a teaching fellow working so most of my colleagues have completed theirs. Only the very strongest would have a solo authored paper as part of their PhD.)

Thanks for this, after the initial shock and tears, she has asked to speak to her PhD supervisor as a matter of urgency and discuss before it heads to an academic disciplinary panel. She has been supervised all along and her supervisor has been really supportive and they conduct a lot of joint research and they have co-published papers together. It feels unfair that she now has had this sprung on her.

She needs to contact her PAT and her students’ union.

Presumably this has been flagged after a Turniton report, so she needs to be given a copy of that and also told what the area(s) of concern are so that she can prepare for the Academic Integrity meeting. (She need to contact the CQA -they would have sent her the notice that her work has been flagged.)

Honestly, as @CelesteCunningham says, we dont ‘get’ self-plagiarism. My husband writes articles for various legal etc. publications and often recycles stuff 🤷‍♀️ but students are continually warned about it.

Agree broadly with this, as someone who has also sat on these at final year and MA level.

This seems unfair (as it is essentially her own work)

You're misunderstanding -- it may be 'essentially her own work', but if she's already submitted the same or very similar material in essays for which she received academic credit, and then submits it again for her dissertation, she's unfairly getting two sets of credit for the same work.

If I already got marks for an MA essay on the representation of governesses in the work of Anne and Charlotte Bronte, and for an essay on female agricultural workers in Thomas Hardy then I can't submit broadly the same material as chapter 2 and 3 of my dissertation on 'Women and Work in the 19thc Novel' and expect to get credit that goes towards my final grade for it both times.

I'd suggest she starts by doing what @CelesteCunningham suggests.

Oh gosh, her PhD, that's awful. It's bewildering that it's gotten to this stage, PhDs are reviewed so often before submission. She needs to get advice from every source possible, start with the student union and go from there. Also her supervisor (obviously) and the PhD programme coordinator.

Her work is for her MPhil which is on her way to a PhD. She is away from home and I have been speaking to her all day and she is frantic. She has talked about abandoning her PhD as she feels she is not cut out for this life and wants to give up on education. I feel she is having a crisis of confidence and don't know how to support her at the moment. He supervisor can only see her next week so she has an uneasy weekend. We have booked a hotel to be near her and will drive to support her this weekend.

Yes absolutely, we've all come across students in that boat! But submitting a thesis against your supervisor's advice would be quite the move.

What papers is she accused of plagiarising? Our students take taught modules in their first year and submit coursework for that, reusing that would be very different to presenting work she's had published in academic journals, for example.

You are right. I can't believe that this has suddenly happened, especially since my daughter has been supervised continuously. She may have only revealed this to us when it became a crisis.

I can't believe that she would be so naive to allow this to happen and let this proceed unless it is down to stress.