Thursday 14 January 2016

ethics - Is it plagiarism to copy the form and structure of an article?




As an undergraduate student, I wrote a science paper. Because I was learning to write, I used the form and structure of a paper on a completely different topic; in fact, it was a slightly different discipline all together. So my paper has a similar layout, transitions, and structure as said paper, though the information, content, subject matter, and topic are different.


Is this plagiarism? I later contacted the original author, upon discovering the similarities, and he said that it was okay, that he learned the form from others, and that I should go on with life.



Answer



You've done nothing wrong; most manuscripts follow the same structure.


Consider the following recommendations for structure: (1) Introduction, (2) Materials and Methods, (3) Results, and (4) Discussion. Would it be wrong to adopt that structure? No. It's a very common style and is widely adopted.




The OP added:




It's not just the [structure] that I followed, but the language - i.e. transition words.



Transition words, e.g., https://msu.edu/~jdowell/135/transw.html, are standard, so they shouldn't create an issue.



The order of the introduction is the same, for example.



That's just a different form of structural issue, hence, this isn't a problem.



I said why the world needs the paper in a similar language even though there was two totally different topics and subject matters.




Such a style is advocated by many, e.g., Simon Peyton Jones, so that shouldn't create an issue.




Note: Without seeing the texts, we cannot comment on specific issues.


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