Responsible Authorship Responsible Conduct of Research Seminar George Mason University 2017 Jeff Offutt Professor of Software Engineering, VSE http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/

OUTLINE My Background Authorship Rules Plagiarism—What, When, How ? © Jeff Offutt

My Background Professor of Software Engineering (VSE, CS) > 175 refereed publications, H-index = 59 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, 4 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 © Jeff Offutt

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? © Jeff Offutt

OUTLINE My Background Authorship Rules Plagiarism—What, When, How ? © Jeff Offutt

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 © Jeff Offutt

“Substantial Contribution” How to determine “contribution” ? YES Would results be different? Ran the experiment Full editing rewrite (maybe) Built experimental infrastructure (lab, software, etc.) In the room? (maybe) NO Experimental subject Grammar editing Provide funding Did work that was cut during revision Authorship must be discussed openly, objectively, and rationally © Jeff Offutt

Two useful “rules of thumb” 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 © Jeff Offutt

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 © Jeff Offutt

Possible ordering strategies: Authorship Order 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 © Jeff Offutt

What ordering strategy do you (or your advisors) use? © Jeff Offutt

OUTLINE My Background Authorship Rules Plagiarism—What, When, How ? © Jeff Offutt

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) © Jeff Offutt

Types of Plagiarism Complete copying Copying key results Submitting most or all of a paper as if it were your own Complete copying Claiming someone else’s results, even with different words or unpublished Copying key results Copying words or results from an unpublished source Copying unpublished work Copying sentences or paragraphs from related work, background, etc. Copying auxiliary text Copying figures Copying a figure from another paper Missing quotation marks or improper reference to quoted text Improper quoting © Jeff Offutt

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 © Jeff Offutt

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 © Jeff Offutt

Journal editors do not care why. All plagiarism is considered as knowing, willful, and intentional. We have “one strike and you’re out” policies. © Jeff Offutt

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 © Jeff Offutt

Discussion : Which of these constitute plagiarism? Copying your friend’s introduction, changing a few words? Yes Copying a figure from your previous paper? No Watching your classmate write a program, then going home and writing your own program from memory? Yes Yes Reusing terms defined in a paper you reviewed and rejected? Submitting a paper to two different journals at the same time? Yes Forgetting where you read something, so omitting the reference? Yes Yes No Adding additional material to your conference paper and submitting the expanded paper to a journal? No Copying background paragraphs from your advisor’s paper into your dissertation? Yes © Jeff Offutt

Three of my editorials from STVR 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 © Jeff Offutt