Using a github code for my journal paper

Question

I'm conducting research on cyber bullying classification. I recently found a github repository containing code on sentiment analysis which looked at different machine learning algorithms, doc2vec + ml classifiers and a word2vec + cnn model. My dataset is different and I do use different machine learning classifiers than the github code does. However, the way the code in the repository trained the cnn model and the word2vec that was used is exactly the same.

Would using the code in the repository for my problem be considered plagiarism?

The question is a bit confusing: how does the title relate to the text? Are you planning to use the existing code on GitHub, or is your implementation doing the same thing as the existing code? — GoodDeeds, Aug 15 '20 at 01:09
basically, the github code has three parts which i will be using but slightly tweaking the code — user128373, Aug 15 '20 at 01:13
Does this answer your question? How do you cite a Github repository? — GoodDeeds, Aug 15 '20 at 01:19
As long as you cite the source it's not plagiarism. The question of whether it's an original enough contribution is a different matter. — Erwan, Aug 15 '20 at 13:49
@FedericoPoloni right, done. At first I thought it was a duplicate of the linked question but actually it's not, the other question is about how to cite a software made by the author. — Erwan, Aug 15 '20 at 16:33

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 15 '20 at 16:28

It would be plagiarism only if you don't cite the source. There's no plagiarism issue if you properly explain that you use this source code as a basis for your implementation and make it clear that it's not yours (preferably by citing a paper from the original authors if any, if not just give the github link).

Whether this will be considered an original contribution by the reviewers is a different matter. It might be ok if your motivation and data are significantly different from what the original authors did.

Using a github code for my journal paper

1 Answers1