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?

Does she not submit it to 'turn it in' or similar first which checks for plagiarism, including self plagiarism?

I am not sure of the academic process in the UK myself and how academic supervision is conducted in the UK. I was last in University in Taiwan over 35 years ago.

I will need to speak to my daughter personally. I really want to support her but she is not really making any sense when I speak to her on the phone. I have a knot in my stomach after the stress of the day.

I find it difficult to understand how she has got to this point, because her supervisor should have been reviewing her work and if she’d presented accurate outlines for each chapter then the supervisor would have pointed out the danger of self-plagiarism.

anyway, regardless of how she ended up here, she needs to work with her supervisor to fix it. Not you OP, sorry. You can of course provide emotional support, but this is your daughters situation to fix.

Not quite -- it's an MPhil at the moment, and even in a best-case scenario, it may be that the OP's daughter comes out with a terminal MPhil.

There's clearly a lot of expertise on this thread.

But, I really feel for your daughter. I feel like the supervisor has prioritised their own publication over your daughter's successful completion of her doctorate. I hope there is a good outcome.

Her supervisor should have been familiar with the rules and should also have been familiar enough with her thesis to spot stuff like this long before she submitted it.

Yes, your daughter messed up but her supervisor also dropped the ball. Where I work, the Head of Department would be speaking to the supervisor about this.

My son used to work at the same uni he had studied at and was shocked at how the standard of supervision had rapidly declined compared with the supervision he had benefitted from when he did his masters and phd.

Here is the UCL guide for students on this situation. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/doctoral-school/rights-and-responsibilities/research-integrity-and-ethics/guidance-incorporating-published-work-your

Your daughter's university might have slightly different rules but it should be similar.

The general idea is that you can reuse text from your own published papers in your PhD thesis if you declare it. This is very common especially in science.

You cannot reuse text from previous university assignments or assessments. So you can't reuse your MSc work in your PhD.

It is quite possible that an over zealous admin person used turn-it-in and hasn't realised this is the students own work. Or that your daughter needs to declare the published papers appropriately. So both are entirely solvable.

Normal in my field too - I have examined and had my own students submit doctoral theses that contain one or more published papers as chapters (not the actual published pdf but a word version of it). We encourage students to publish so they are competitive in the job field as soon as possible.

I am astounded to hear a PhD student has been accused of self-plagiarism.

I am astounded to hear a PhD student has been accused of self-plagiarism.

Right? Someone's fucked up royally, but I wouldn't want to bet whether it's the student, the supervisor or some sort of clerical error.

Self plagiarism is definitely a thing, and stands in line with academic misconduct. She needed to reference herself when she used her previous work, so I take it she didn't do that. I'm surprised at PhD level she didn't know that.

But if the work that has been published IS the PhD you can't just reference your papers or you wouldn't have a PhD thesis!

When I submitted mine I was told to include a list in the front of the thesis of all the papers I had published resulting from the research in the thesis that I did for my doctorate but that work was fully presented in the thesis including tabulating all the data, methods, interpretations and conclusions. I did not cite any of my papers in the text of the thesis. Nobody accused me of self-plagiarism!

You are entitled to publish your PhD research and 'self plagiarise' your thesis.

Self plagiarism is a thing but is NOT always academic misconduct. As you'll see in the UCL guidelines I linked above, a student is permitted to use their own published papers in their PhD thesis when this is noted.

Yes it is fine - it is rare in some fields to write single author papers - I have only one! But the student ought to be the first author and sometimes they submit a statement of what their contribution to each paper was with the thesis.

As a supervisor I am always a bit cautious about them including multi-authored papers because the viva is essentially to check the student did the work and for them to defend their thesis and ideas ( not their co-authors ideas!). And you can end up putting a lot of effort into a joint paper but the student should acknowledge their coauthors contributions up front.

Is it possible the supervisor is not familiar with your daughter's previous work so might not have spotted that she was quoting herself? Or that the problem lies in not correctly identifying the source material? Keep calm and encourage your daughter to do the same, she needs to find out exactly which parts of her thesis are causing problems and then work out how to solve.

I didn't do this, but for my PhD, that was one of the options for your thesis. However, there were very specific rules about which papers you could use (mainly in terms of authorship and how much you had contributed) and you had to have clearly selected this option. I don't remember all the details (since I didn't go this route) but it definitely existed.

Sure, but I think some people are also forgetting that this isn't (yet) a doctoral situation -- the OP's daughter is on an MPhil programme, technically en route to a doctorate (presumably in her first year of what may become a doctoral pathway) , but she still needs official approval from both her supervisor and (in our case) the School's graduate research committee that she has fulfilled academic requirements to move on to doctoral work.

So not possible to say, from the OP's limited understanding of what is going on, whether the OP has self-plagiarised from coursework by repeating it in her MPhil dissertation, or what exactly has happened.

Thank you for all the support. My daughter has managed to speak to University staff but not her supervisor. They have advised that what will potentially happen is that she will have to take a course on research methods and academic writing (that she missed when she started as she felt that as she had a masters, she would not have to do). Then she will have to rework and resubmit her thesis. Hopefully this is the case, but she really needs to see whether they will take this any further and really clarify her course of action.

I want to support her, but she is also an adult and she needs to take agency in her actions and what she has done so far. I think there is blame all around, but really I have explained to my daughter that she must be the one who finds a resolution to this matter, as no one else will live her life and have her interests at heart, as much as her. She really wants to progress to a PhD and if she hungers for it, then she needs to fight for it.

After the tears yesterday. My daughter is adamant that she does not want me to get involved and not go and visit her. She feels that she can handle it herself.

I know she is an adult, but she is also my little girl. I don't know whether I should force the situation and go and visit or don't know whether she will handle the stress of a parental visit in addition to the stress of her work.

It sounds like she will be fine. Doing the academic writing course is a small hurdle and then she will be back on track.

I know how you feel OP - one of my daughters was accused of plagiarism in her 2nd year of undergrad and I KNOW she didn't do it purpose - she is the most upright and honest child - it was a mistake (convoluted reasons and she should have just asked for an extension for circumstances outside her control) and it was just 2/3 sentences in her introduction.

I have to say her university were brutal - far worse than we would ever be with a student for that level of plagiarism - and she was mortified and was going to quit as she couldn't beat the shame.

And - worst of all - they informed her just before her end of year exams and left it hanging over her until after the exams had finished. It was shocking. She was a wreck and wanted to quit. Cost her a first.

I nearly complained but contented myself with writing to her personal tutor to say if he didn't get her in and explain to her that she didn't have cheat written across her forehead they were going to loose a student. To his credit he did.

Definitely brought out the mama bear in me though!

Please do not get involved. Your daughter is an adult and it will not look good for her academic future if her mum phones up to speak to staff on her behalf. You have to let her sort this one out herself no matter how you feel about it. Sticking your nose in would just humiliate her with her supervisors and potential future colleagues. By all means advise her and support her but this is her own issue to deal with.

I don't think OP was planning on getting involved with the university - more going to support her DD while her DD deals with the problem, which may or may not be a good idea depending on their nature and relationship.