I encourage you to pursue the matter.

If the author in question is an academic in the United States, you 
would have several options. One would be to write to the dean of the 
faculty where the author is a member. (Don't bother writing to the 
chairman or chairwoman, because they will only send the letter to the 
dean.) Another option would be to write to the American Association 
of University Professors. But your protest would probably die quietly 
there. See http://hnn.us/articles/616.html .

Probably your best bet is to write to the American Philosophical 
Association: http://www.apaonline.org/default.aspx . However, I 
cannot find there any sign of a committee on "professional ethics," 
like that in the American Historical Association. Regarding the 
latter, here is its position, at least (almost) 19 years ago:

American Historical Association, Statement on Plagiarism

(Adopted May 1986; amended May 1990)

Editor's Note: This statement was prepared by John

Higham, Johns Hopkins University, and

Robert L. Zangrando, University of Akron.



I. Identifying Plagiarism

The word plagiarism can be traced to its Latin roots: plagiarius, an 
abductor or plunderer, and plagiare, to steal. The expropriation of 
another author's findings, interpretation, or text, presented 
thereafter as one's own creation without proper attribution to its 
actual source, is a cardinal violation of the ethics of scholarship. 
The plagiarist undermines the credibility of historical inquiry and 
betrays the code of the entire scholarly community.

In 1956 J. Bronowski, in his book Science and Human

Values (Julian Messner, Inc.), declared that:

.. [A] II our knowledge has been built up communally.... It follows 
that we must be able to rely on other people; we must be able to 
trust their word. That is, it follows that there is a principle which 
binds society together, because without it the individual would be 
helpless to tell the true from false. This principle is truthfulness. 
If we accept truth as an individual criterion, then we have also to 
make it the cement to hold society together.

Bronowski's injunction applied to the historical profession with 
special force, since a critical knowledge of the source of everything 
we examine is so central to our craft. Accordingly, historians place 
a high value on procedures for continually weighing the origin and 
reliability of their work. Book reviews serve this purpose. We expect 
a bibliography to mark out the range of an author's investigation and 
to aid the research of others. We require the approval of doctoral 
dissertations by several well-qualified readers and a further 
evaluation of manuscripts by expert referees prior to publication. 
Most especially, we depend on footnotes to validate evidence. By 
these measures we declare our commitment to accuracy, responsible 
judgment, and probity, and thereby affirm our disavowal of shoddy 
endeavors whether born of haste, inadequate research, faulty 
calculations, or misrepresentation.

In addition to the harm that plagiarism does to the pursuit of truth, 
it is also an offense against the literary rights of the original 
author and the property rights of the copyright owner. Detection can 
therefore result not only in academic sanctions (such as dismissal 
from a graduate program, termination of a faculty contract, denial of 
promotion or tenure) but also civil or criminal prosecution. Civil 
action depends on the willingness of the injured author or publisher 
to sue. Criminal cases arise only if the authorities decide to 
enforce such applicable statutes as the New York State education law 
(213-b, from McKinney's Consolidated Laws of New York Annotated, Book 
16 [West Publishing, 1984]) against the sale of dissertations, 
theses, or term papers by commercial entrepreneurs. As a practical 
matter, plagiarism between scholars rarely gets into court. 
Publishers are eager to avoid adverse publicity, and an injured 
scholar is unlikely to seek material compensation for 
misappropriation of what he or she gave gladly to the world. The real 
penalty for plagiarism is the abhorrence of the community of scholars.

Plagiarism tests our powers of discrimination because it takes many 
forms and appears in varying degrees. Most transparently, it involves 
the use of another person's language and sources without citation. 
More subtle is the unacknowledged appropriation of concepts, data, 
and footnotes, all disguised in paraphrased or newly crafted 
sentences. Alternatively, an artful historian can minimize a 
significant obligation by casually mentioning that work in an early 
footnote and thereafter regularly using its analysis without further 
attribution. What is demonstrably plagiaristic shades off into an 
unworthy disregard for the contributions of others.

Some types of historical writing, such as textbooks, encyclopedia 
articles, and popular syntheses, do not require a conscientious 
display of sources. As knowledge is disseminated to a wide public, it 
loses some of its personal reference. What belongs to whom 
necessarily becomes less distinct. But the prohibition against 
reproducing the sentences of others without quotation or 
acknowledgment applies just as strongly here as it does in academic discourse.

The threat of plagiarism is always present. The struggle for tenured 
positions is intense, while the moral responsibilities of individuals 
to one another are greatly unsettled. The temptation to gain unearned 
advantage becomes greater now that there are so many publishing 
outlets for highly specialized research, which very few readers can 
trace to an unacknowledged source. All those factors are commonly 
cited in accounting for the astonishingly widespread instances of 
fraud and plagiarism that have come to light in recent years in the 
natural sciences. The same factors affect historians.

11. Resisting Plagiarism

All who participate in the community of inquiry, as amateurs or as 
professionals, as students or as established historians, have an 
obligation to oppose deception actively in themselves and in others. 
This obligation bears with special weight on the directors of 
graduate seminars. They are critical in shaping a young historian's 
perception of the ethics of scholarship. It is therefore incumbent on 
graduate teachers to seek opportunities for making the seminar also a 
workshop in scholarly integrity. After leaving graduate school, every 
historian will have to depend primarily on vigilant self-criticism. 
Throughout our lives none of us can cease to question the claims our 
work makes and the sort of credit it grants to others.

But just as important as the self-criticism that guards us from 
self-deception is the formation of work habits that automatically 
protect a scholar from plagiarism. The plagiarist's standard 
defense-that he or she was misled by hastily taken and imperfect 
notes-is plausible only in the context of a wider tolerance of shoddy 
work. A basic rule of good note taking requires every researcher to 
distinguish scrupulously between exact quotation and paraphrase. A 
basic rule of good writing warns us against following our own 
paraphrased notes slavishly. When a historian simply links one 
paraphrase to the next, even if the sources are cited, a kind of 
structural plagiarism takes place; the writer is implicitly claiming 
a shaping intelligence that actually belonged to the sources. Faced 
with charges of failing to acknowledge dependence on certain sources, 
a historian usually pleads that the lapse was inadvertent. This 
excuse will be easily disposed of if scholars take seriously the 
injunction to check their manuscripts against the underlying texts 
prior to publication. Historians have a right to expect of one 
another a standard of workmanship that deprives plagiarism of its 
usual extenuations.

The second line of defense against plagiarism is organized and 
punitive. Every institution that includes or represents a body of 
scholars has an obligation to establish procedures designed to 
clarify and uphold their ethical standards. Every institution that 
employs historians bears an especially critical responsibility to 
maintain the integrity and reputation of its staff. This applies to 
government agencies, corporations, publishing firms, and public 
service organizations like museums and archives, as surely it does to 
educational facilities. Usually, it is the employing institution that 
is expected to investigate charges of plagiarism (or related 
offenses) promptly and impartially and to invoke appropriate 
sanctions when the charges are sustained.

Many learned professions are just beginning to think seriously about 
the need for general policies on fraudulent research and writing. 
Usually, employing institutions tend to respond to each case in an ad 
hoc manner, with responses ranging from extreme indulgence to 
uncompromising severity. Students are often dealt with more harshly 
than colleagues. One university recently revoked a Ph.D. awarded 
seven years earlier on discovering that the dissertation author had 
plagiarized a research paper written by another scholar. In another 
recent instance, however, a student found to have misused the work of 
others was merely required by his doctoral committee to rewrite the 
offending passages. In one case a full professor was forced to resign 
for closely paraphrasing or copying passages from other historians 
without proper acknowledgment. But there is also a strong tendency to 
hush up lurid charges, and to rest content with a quiet, equivocal 
apology because of sympathy for a popular colleague assailed by a 
remote and seemingly meanspirited rival.

It is right that penalties for scholarly misconduct should vary 
according to the seriousness of the offense. A persistent pattern of 
deception justifies termination of an academic career; some scattered 
misappropriations may warrant only a public disclosure. What is 
troubling is not the variation in responses but rather the reluctance 
of many scholars to speak out about the possible offenses that come 
to their notice. No one advocates hasty or ill-founded accusations, 
and the protections of due process should always apply. If, however, 
charges of plagiarism or gross impropriety are sustained by an 
investigating committee, its findings should ordinarily be made 
public. When appraising manuscripts for publication, reviewing books, 
or evaluating peers for placement, promotion, and tenure, the 
trustworthiness of the historian should never be overlooked. After 
all, scholarship flourishes in an atmosphere of openness and candor, 
which should, in our opinion, include the scrutiny and discussion of 
academic deception.


John Womack