Shifting the Norm: The Case of Academic Plagiarism Detection

This chapter describes how academic plagiarism poses a challenge for digital humanities, when sophisticated tools make it possible to discover inappropriate academic activity. Focusing on dissertations defended in Russia in recent years, the authors discuss academic plagiarism and examine the changing norms of academic integrity. Section 27.1 introduces the questions under consideration. The next describes various types of plagiarism and computational tools used to detect them. Section 27.3 reviews available digitized resources. The activities of the Dissernet network are described in Sect. 27.4, which presents an overall picture of findings based on large-scale (more than 50%) plagiarism in dissertations. The case study described in Sect. 27.5 concerns small-scale plagiarism within the same academic genre, raising the question of academic authenticity’s shifting norms.