Is it plagiarism if someone else came up with something before you did?

Question

Say you come up with an idea, but X already has written about it before, even though you don't know about this.

Is it plagiarism to then publish the idea, even if during publishing you still are not aware that X came up with this idea first?

That is, can you accidentally commit plagiarism in this way?

You can (and should) prevent this from happening by doing a proper literature search before working on your ideas! — asquared, Apr 20 '17 at 17:15
Plagiarism requires dishonesty or negligence. If you were completely honest and weren't negligent, you did not commit plagiarism. Period. — David Schwartz, Apr 20 '17 at 22:25
@JayFromA: Supposing the similar idea is published in a different field, and is described in unfamiliar terms so that your literature search doesn't happen to hit on it? Lesser instances of this happen to me all the time, when I do a Google search for something using what seem to be to be natural search terms, yet someone else can do a search on what they think are relevant terms and get back a bunch of different results. — jamesqf, Apr 21 '17 at 04:15
@JayFromA How do you do a "proper" literature search ? And how do you prevent using slightly different wording and not finding any results ? I mean you could search through every paper ever written, but even then noone knows what people are currently working on that isn't published yet, but that would take an unreasonably enough time. — HopefullyHelpful, Apr 21 '17 at 08:06
@DavidSchwartz How can negligence ever constitute plagiarism? — David Richerby, Apr 21 '17 at 08:43
@DavidRicherby I can imagine lots of ways. For example, say you find something you wrote on a piece of paper. You don't remember whether it was original or you copied it from someone else. You negligently fail to check and publish it as original work when actually you copied it from someone else. Here's another: You think of something you think is original. You negligently fail to do basic literature searching to see if someone else already published it and publish it as original work. Someone else already published it in a place you would have found had you not been negligent. — David Schwartz, Apr 21 '17 at 08:48
@DavidSchwartz The "piece of paper" mechanism seems a bit far-fetched to me but OK. However, independent recreation followed by a failure to do an adequate literature search is not plagiarism: it might be hard to convince people that you didn't plagiarize but plagiarism is fundamentally an act of deception, not of negligence. — David Richerby, Apr 21 '17 at 09:02
@DavidRicherby the piece of paper is far-fetched, but something I've seen students do is paste text into a notes file when learning a topic, then paste again into their final work without caring where the original came from (it's pretty obvious when the source is wikipedia and the writing is much better than the rest of their work) — Chris H, Apr 21 '17 at 09:33
@DavidRicherby I agree that plagiarism is fundamentally an act of deception, but it doesn't follow that negligence can't be an act of deception. For example, if the standard in a field is to conduct a diligent search to determine if your claims are original before publishing them, then being negligent in that search is deceptive because the act of publishing implies you were diligent. It's the same as a car dealer selling a car while being negligent in ensuring it's safe to drive -- that's deceptive because selling the car implies it's safe. — David Schwartz, Apr 21 '17 at 10:14
@DavidRicherby I have witnessed acts of academic negligence where the person justified their negligence by claiming that they did not want to "stain" their own thought process with the knowledge of other people's work on the topic. I don't think there's a particular term for this act of negligence, so I am happy to refer to it as "plagiarism". — Lee Mosher, Apr 21 '17 at 13:25
@LeeMosher I'm sorry, but something not having a name isn't any sort of a reason to call it plagiarism. I mean, I don't think there's any particular term for the act of writing a paper without drinking any coffee, so let's call that "plagiarism", too! — David Richerby, Apr 21 '17 at 15:44
@LeeMosher Lev Landau (as the story goes) was famously disinclined to read anybody else's work, and found it more straightforward to re-deduce all of mathematical physics from first principles, when required. His papers do indeed have rather thin bibliographies (and are regarded as valuable for the clarity of their thought). I don't think anyone thinks this was plagiarism on his part, but equally don't think folk can get away with this unless they're quite as good as Landau (which is approximately zero people). — Norman Gray, Apr 21 '17 at 17:18
No, but, ... (as other comments and answers have said... ). ............. — paul garrett, Apr 21 '17 at 23:48
Personally, I would say yes, it is, but if you had not known, then you're right, it had only been an accident. It's trying to prove that it had only been an accident that makes this tricky. In the meantime, I would go with others' comments that say it is our responsibility to do a literature search beforehand if not to protect ourselves, than at least to check that we're not saying something that's already been said (similar to read others' answers here on SE prior to posting new ones). — Teacher KSHuang, Apr 22 '17 at 03:08
@DavidSchwartz : and how do you prove you didn't know about it? — vsz, Apr 24 '17 at 07:03
@vsz Exactly. One of the reasons negligence is almost always considered equivalent to dishonesty is because they are so difficult to distinguish and there's really no reason to treat them differently for precisely the reason I explained, negligence is often inherently dishonest. — David Schwartz, Apr 24 '17 at 17:00

score 97 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 20 '17 at 17:56

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If you publish an idea that turns out to have been previously known, but you were unaware of the prior work before you published it, then it's not plagiarism. Depending on the circumstances, it could be considered poor scholarship, or even negligence if you really should have found the reference. However, it's not a form of academic dishonesty if you truly didn't know.

If you come up with an idea on your own, learn that it was previously known, and subsequently publish it as original work without disclosing the prior source, then it's definitely academic dishonesty. I wouldn't use the word "plagiarism" if you came up with the idea independently, but it's still misconduct to act like you're unaware of the idea's history.

The trickiest case is if you may have been aware of the idea in the past, but forgotten about it. That's a horrible mess, since the rest of the world has no way of knowing whether you genuinely forgot or are being dishonest. (You really don't want to have to argue that you aren't a thief, but rather massively screwed up.) This is the only case in which I think accidental plagiarism is really plausible.

This is not at all common, but it can happen more easily than you might hope, so it's best to be careful to keep track of what you've heard about. The worrisome scenario is the following: you hear Smith give a talk, but you don't really understand it or care very much, so you basically forget about it. Some years later, you are faced with a similar problem and come up with more or less the same idea to solve it. You don't realize how similar it is to Smith's talk, but you may have been influenced by subconscious memories, so you haven't really discovered it independently. When you publish your idea, Smith writes to you to say "How dare you use my idea without giving me any credit! I know you were at my talk, since we chatted afterwards, and your colleague X confirms that he remembers you there as well. Did you really think you could get away with this?"

answered Apr 20 '17 at 17:56

Anonymous Mathematician

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If this happens to you, how can you prove that "you truly didn't know"? Of course you could hope people give you the benefit of the doubt but doesn´t it all go back to bad literature search if the idea was already published? – asquared Apr 20 '17 at 18:12
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Yeah, you generally can't prove it. If you're lucky, you'll have a good reputation for honesty and the way you express the idea will be different enough that people will believe you. If you're not lucky, you may never escape the suspicion of plagiarism. (But that doesn't mean you were actually guilty of plagiarism, just that you couldn't prove you weren't.) – Anonymous Mathematician Apr 20 '17 at 18:19
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As for bad literature searches, if the idea was easy to find in the literature, then the best you can hope for is looking sloppy or lazy, which isn't a good outcome. On the other hand, sometimes it's not so easy. (Maybe it was published somewhere very obscure, or it came up in a completely different research community where a reasonable person might not have done much looking.) In that case, you have more of an excuse for not knowing it, even though you have to acknowledge it once you know. – Anonymous Mathematician Apr 20 '17 at 18:22
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There’s actually a name for unconscious influence by something you don’t knowingly remember. I’d link to it but I can’t remember what it is. – JDługosz Apr 20 '17 at 20:57
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@JDługosz Cryptomnesia – Miles Apr 21 '17 at 00:54
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@Miles, I'm not entirely sure that JDlugosz didn't remember what it was. :D – Wildcard Apr 21 '17 at 04:56
@anonymous mathematician, this is really the answer I was looking for, thank you. I have one important followup qurstion: If you are in a situation where you've published something that is similar to some other idea that is easy to find, but out of lazyness you didn't find it: would in that case the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" apply, or would it be presumed that you've been dishonest? In other words: if there is no "smoking gun evidence" that you've been in contact with that earlier work, would there still be the presumption of dishonesty and punishment by your university? – user56834 Apr 21 '17 at 06:48
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Interesting (maybe) non-academic example of this: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards unintentionally plagiarised kd lang's "Constant Craving". Of course they could never prove it was unintentional, but once the similarity was pointed out they gave her a writing credit on "Anybody Seen My Baby?". Given how well-known her song was, this would probably have been considered negligent in academia... – Steve Jessop Apr 21 '17 at 10:57
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"Depending on the circumstances, it could be considered poor scholarship"-- agreed. In my field, this would be extremely embarrassing and reputation-diminishing, as it would indicate that one did not read one's own field. However, I imagine graduate students are more likely to fall into this than postdocs and faculty, in which case your supervisor should be able to prevent this from happening (if only by asking, "Did you read x/y/z?"). Side note: this actually happened to me the other day, where I thought I had an 'original' idea and then discovered a whole monograph about it. XD – adspeed Apr 21 '17 at 13:06
@SteveJessop Great, now I have "Constant Craving" stuck in my head... ;) – adspeed Apr 21 '17 at 13:14
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If you completely 100% wrote a paper based on your own findings and then find another paper with similar findings before you go to publish (but maybe mildly focusing on a different aspect), then what obligation would you have to cite the other author? Citation and referencing refers to giving credit to a work that you read as inspiration for yours or to provide credibility. I mean no offense, but citing things simply for being similar makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. – user64742 Apr 21 '17 at 18:05
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@TheGreatDuck: If nothing else, you should cite the earlier work and point out why your work differs from it so that the referee is less likely to say "there's nothing new & interesting in this paper, don't publish it." – Michael Seifert Apr 21 '17 at 18:25
@MichaelSeifert alright, but let's say you are self-publishing. It isn't plagiarism if you never used it as a reference. Plagiarism is just referring to another work without providing a proper citation.If you've never read the other work,then yes it is good to refer to it in hindsight for reasons of comparison, but there shouldn't be an issue of plagiarism when neither work refers to the other.I could write a paper on trying to solve a difficult math equation on my own for leisure.That doesn't mean I ripped off some other paper about the same equation assuming it's easy enough to stumble upon. – user64742 Apr 22 '17 at 01:47
@AnonymousMathematician "If you come up with an idea on your own, learn that it was previously known, and subsequently publish it as original work without disclosing the prior source, then it's definitely academic dishonesty. I wouldn't use the word "plagiarism" if you came up with the idea independently, but it's still misconduct to act like you're unaware of the idea's history." But is it academic misconduct as in plagiarism type misconducts or is it misconduct in the sense that it just indicates incompetent research? I'd argue that either is bad, but one just indicates poor writing ability. – user64742 Apr 22 '17 at 01:51
I happened (two or three times) to ask twice the same question on SE. I had forgotten I had the problem and that there was (or not) a solution to it. This was thankfully found via the automatic search propositions (the question was very specific and did not show up in a search) and would have been otherwise closed as duplicate -- but the real world does not have this notion (unfortunately) – WoJ Apr 22 '17 at 13:12
I would think that if other similar research was published between the time one wrote one's paper and the time it was published, the best action would be to write an addendum recognizing the additional research and identifying which parts are similar to one's own, and which parts of one's own research have independent value. – supercat Apr 23 '17 at 21:34

Tom Au · Answer 2 · 2017-04-21T11:04:52.143

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There is such a thing as independent discovery. In the 17th century, Newton and Leibnitz apparently discovered calculus a year or two apart, but without either knowing about the work of the other. Nowadays, information travels at "warp" speed and "a year or two" would be an unacceptable time lag. Even so, it's possible that two people would publish similar findings, drawn from common sources, days or even hours apart. (And on SE sites, it gets even more intense; sometimes people "publish" similar answers minutes or even seconds apart, neither knowing of the other.) Under such circumstances, concurrent publication is usually excused, but it also behooves one to do a literature search to see if the idea has, in fact been published previously.

edited Apr 21 '17 at 11:04

answered Apr 21 '17 at 03:58

Tom Au

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What about badly worded or named discoveries? What if a work is so unknown or not accesible to most/your search? I guess even then the time lag would be acceptable or not? – HopefullyHelpful Apr 21 '17 at 08:16
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@HopefullyHelpful: If a work is "unknown and not accessible," to the point where you and others honestly didn't know, and reasonably didn't know of it, then you deserve credit for popularizing the work. Then it would be up to the other person to clarify his position, using his previous work as a "hook." I remember reading that the credit for the invention of television hinged on the testimony of the inventor's high school science teacher, who testified to the clarity and completeness of a formulation that predated a rival's earlier publication. – Tom Au Apr 21 '17 at 10:45
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Perhaps the best historical example of this was Darwin and Wallace independently coming up with the theory of evolution. – jamesqf Apr 21 '17 at 19:18
"Newton and Leibnitz apparently discovered calculus a year or two apart". It was more than a year apart. I think there is some evidence that Newton discovered the basics of the calculus while still a student. – Faheem Mitha Apr 23 '17 at 12:35
As a more recent example, credit for the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS was in dispute for quite some time, as it was independently discovered by two teams working separately. A French team at the Pasteur Institute announced the discovery of a virus they called LAV in 1983. In 1984, a US National Cancer Insitute team published their discovery, HLTV-III. How can both teams have discovered a virus responsible for AIDS? Because LAV and HLTV-III were ultimately found to be the same virus. – FeRD Apr 24 '17 at 11:09

score 9 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 22 '17 at 20:37

Building on David's comment:

If you inadvertently reinvent the wheel, without contributing anything additional and meaningful, your paper is unlikely to get published anyway. So let's start with the assumption that you inadvertently reinvented the wheel, did not credit the original inventor, and then added something meaningful. It is likely the review process would trigger a correction in this situation.

I think it would be helpful to review what plagiarism tends to look like. I have seen the following, as a copy editor:

Neglect to give credit for a creative assertion
Lift text from someone else's work, without putting quotes around it
Same as 1 or 2, but from your own previously published work

Other types of sloppiness I've seen:

Cite the wrong author(s) for a creative assertion or quote
Make a significant mistake in the citation
Cite the wrong work (but at least getting the researcher right)

score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 21 '17 at 17:26

I have seen this happening in my field twice. Both researchers became famous because they did some research that was completed by others before its time being completely unaware of that research existence. Neither the editors, or the referees helped with this.

In one case, the researcher who was in this situation learned from colleagues that similar work was done in the 70's by a prominent Russian scientist, so he acknowledged it, and everyone is citing the Russian guy ever since. The good outcome is that the Russian guy made his re-entry in the field and made more contributions.

In the other case, the original paper was written by a Japanese scientist, who was a postdoc at the time, and everyone forgot about it. Three years later, another researcher wrote a very similar paper, became famous for it, but never cited the Japanese guy. In fact, very few people in the field cite him.

Since many fields are becoming increasingly multidisciplinary, I don't believe a single guy can do proper literature search. You can use google and web of science and whatever tools, but unless you are specialist in a field, you are very likely to miss something. Even if your random walk from citation to citation takes a significant percentage of your time, it may not be ergodic. For better ergodicity is good to have conversations with older scientists who might have stumbled upon your reference in the past. In any case, if you succeed to do your literature search properly, you will notice that there are a few others who didn't. The most unpleasant are the ones that should have cited you, and don't even answer the email you send them.

To answer the question, I don't believe it's plagiarism. In fact, before the advent of specialized science journals, it was quite a common situation in science. -- Remember all those two-name theorems from mathematics. Many of them were developed years apart by different scientists.

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 22 '17 at 12:14

As addition to the other answers: I think it is possible to distinguish if you are academically dishonest or that you really invented the wheel again.

If you reinvented the wheel, you will have worked with the new method a longer time to verify that it really works and you will therefore know its merits and its disadvantages. Moreover the path how you invented will be almost always different from the original author, so it will give you very specific insights which you intuitively grasp, but it does not give you the insights if you followed another path.

So a short interview (preferably with the original author if he/she is not malignant) would settle with high probability if you really invented the method yourself.

The Newton-Leibniz controversy is a good example: Newton used the "fluxion" approach, always dividing out the resulting equation and neglecting the remaining part while Leibniz see them as "differential", a ratio of infinitesimal changes, so he could cancel out e.g. (dy/dx) * dx = dy. Both used the same method to finally get the derivative at one point, but their interpretation varied. Both methods were attacked for their lack of rigour, but Leibniz approach was formally more elegant and easier to handle, so his integral notation prevailed.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered May 16 '17 at 05:38

Some assumptions here are that you are intellectually honest, you use a reputable publisher, and the prior work in question was done some time before yours. If your due diligence (and your publishers) didn't discover it in mainstream publishing in your field, it couldn't be considered plagiarism. While this answers your question, it still leaves open the likelihood of conflict over credit. Even without political considerations, history is replete with antagonism that carries for generations. While we as a society consider publishing important work of any kind to serve mankind, you can see how vital it can be to the author.

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered May 17 '17 at 23:28

There is a famous example for this question. Some people re-discovered calculus in the following paper:

“A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves”, Mary M. Tai, Diabetes Care, 1994, 17, 152–154.

You can laugh, but no, they did not commit plagiarism.

More details.

score -2 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 21 '17 at 19:59

Real plagiarism involves deliberately copying someone else's work. I saw this when editing a paper for a PhD candidate who was worried about his English. Parts of the paper were badly constructed, but other parts were letter perfect. So I used Google to check for some of the unique phrases in the well-written section. Bingo! Wikipedia!

I did not tell him what I found. Instead I fixed the most glaring of his errors in English, gave him a note that Wikipedia was not an acceptable source, and hoped that his advisor and his examination committee would discover his malfeasance. They needed to hang him by his thumbs.

Generally if you find that you have inadvertently used someone else's idea without attribution it is good if you can later publish something that corrects the situation. It's better to do it that way than to have someone else point you out as a possible thief.

This is basically a definition of plagiarism, which the existing answers already cover, plus an anecdote that has nothing to do with the question. — David Richerby, Apr 21 '17 at 20:27

Is it plagiarism if someone else came up with something before you did?

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