how much plagiarism is allowed in thesis in germany

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Dealing with Plagiarism

Since the 2014 summer semester, the Faculty of Social Sciences has developed a procedure for dealing with plagiarism, which has been approved by the Faculty Council. The guiding principle in academic work is honesty towards oneself and others. The Faculty of Social Sciences is bound by Goethe University Frankfurt’s principles for the safeguarding of good academic practice as well as the Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice of the German Research Foundation. In this sense, all academic papers submitted to the Faculty of Social Sciences for assessment must meet the applicable academic standards.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is a form of academic misconduct and an infringement of the basic principles of good academic practice.

A paper submitted at the Faculty of Social Sciences is identified as plagiarism if it verifiably uses the intellectual property of another person without marking it as such, thereby suggesting or claiming its authorship. Intellectual property can include whole texts, parts of texts, wordings, ideas, arguments, illustrations, tables or data and must be marked as the intellectual property of the author. If such marking is deliberately omitted in a submitted paper, it causes those assessing the work to make mistakes and thus constitutes deception. All regulations for submitted papers that exist at the Faculty of Social Sciences sanction deception.

The most common forms of plagiarism are: (adapted from Schwarzenegger, Ch./ Wohlers, W.: “Plagiatsformen und disziplinarrechtliche Konsequenzen" in: Fuchs, M.: Quellen zitieren, nicht plagiieren (University of Zurich, unijournal 4/06, p. 3.)

• The author uses another person's entire work or essential parts of it (full plagiarism).
• The author uses and combines parts of texts from different works of others without indicating the sources. This also includes downloading and using parts of texts from the internet without indicating the source (copy & paste plagiarism).
• Translating foreign-language texts or parts of foreign-language texts and passing them off as one's own (translation plagiarism).
• Using parts of a text from another work, but slightly changing and/or rearranging it (paraphrasing), without indicating the source with a reference.

In addition, there are other forms of academic misconduct:

• The author submits a paper under his/her name that was written by another person (ghostwriting).
•   The author submits a paper more than once as an examination achievement, for example in different modules or degree programmes (double assessment of examination achievements).

All these forms of plagiarism remain inadmissible even if the author is mentioned in another context in the paper.

What happens in the event of suspected or actual Plagiarism?

The Faculty of Social Sciences strongly opposes infringements of this kind. As a matter of principle, all papers submitted to the Faculty of Social Sciences must be presented in digital form and include the student’s “Declaration on Examination Achievements” confirming that they have written the paper independently. The papers submitted are retained for a specific time period in accordance with the respective rules and are thus available for easier identification of plagiarism as well as for later checks.

In the event of suspected plagiarism, teaching staff at the Faculty of Social Sciences are requested to review papers submitted for assessment more closely. If a paper submitted for assessment is identified as plagiarism, certain procedural steps are taken:

• Teaching staff state their reasons and provide proof of the plagiarism in writing. The submitted paper is graded as 5.0 (“Insufficient”).
• The Examination Office documents each case of plagiarism as an attempt at deception.
• The Examination Committee examines whether the case is serious. If this is not the case, the paper can be repeated. However, if the case is serious, the student can be excluded from producing further examination achievements. This means that their degree programme in Sociology or Political Science is terminated.
• Students have the possibility to appeal or object against Examination Committee decisions.

The Examination Committee acts on the basis of the applicable Study and Examination Regulations and sanctions academic misconduct accordingly. These sanctions can have far-reaching consequences for the author, such as exclusion from producing further examination achievements or – if discovered later – withdrawal of the academic degree.

Since the 2014 summer semester, students are required to submit this declaration as a compulsory part with all written work. Examination achievements without this declaration are not accepted for grading. In the case of the dissertation, an electronic version must also be submitted.

You can find the "Declaration on Examination Achievements"    in the   downloadcenter  under your field of study. 

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PLAGIARISM IN GERMANY

Authors: Dr. Germán Ruipérez, Full Professor at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia of Madrid (Spain) and Dr. José-Carlos García-Cabrero, Associate Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia of Madrid (Spain) in ‘Plagiarism and Academic Integrity in Germany’ Plagio e integridad académica en Alemania’ Published in ‘Comunicar’

The legal arena

The term plagiarism (Plagiat) is deemed by jurists to be a colloquial term referring  to a particular case of copyright infringement considered in Article 23 of the German Intellectual Property Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz), which states that «preparations or other types of transformations of a work can only be published or used with the permission of the original creator of the prepared or transformed work» . Furthermore, according to Article 97, when a person consciously appropriates the authorship of a thought belonging to a third party, thereby infringing existing copyright or exploitation rights, this is unlawful plagiarism that grants the right to compensation. Therefore, in order to talk of unlawful plagiarism in the German legal sense, the existence of recognized copyright of the original work has to converge with the intention to deceive . The existence of the copyright or exploitation rights of the original work is a clearly objective element. Therefore, if an author literally reproduces text that lacks any legal protection, we could not legally talk of plagiarism, since there would be no infringement of any third party rights. However, it could be said to be academic plagiarism. In addition, if an author cites a third party in accordance with the academic reference regulations in his area of knowledge, we could not talk about academic plagiarism, but, in the end, we could talk of an unlawful event from a legal point of view if it was, for example, a very extensive and unjustified citation in its own context. This could be an infringement of the citation right considered in Article 51 of the German Intellectual Property Law . The intention to deceive and the knowledge of the original work is a subjective element and can, therefore, be difficult to prove. In order for unlawful plagiarism to be attributed to a person, the said person has to have acted consciously, and it is necessary to prove the express premeditation or intention of the deceit. For example, if several paragraphs originally written by a third party are literally reproduced without citing the aforementioned third party, and without using quotation marks, this would be evident proof of the will to commit fraud. The intention to deceive would also be proven if, for example, an author commits the same error as a specific publication upon citing an original source, since it can be inferred that the said original source was not consulted, but rather that it was copied from the publication that was expressly not mentioned, with the original misprint included . However, the mere fact that a thought or idea belonging to a third party is reproduced in a written work does not necessarily imply unlawful plagiarism, since it may have been a casual reproduction that was done unconsciously. From a German legal point of view, this would not be plagiarism, but rather a «double creation» or «Doppelschöpfung» phenomenon. According to German legal terminology two authors casually write about the same thought or idea without either of them being aware of the other .

Colloquial use

The term for plagiarism in German, «Plagiat», comes from the Latin word «plagium» (theft of slaves, in turn related to the Greek form πλαγιος, deceitful).

The German Duden (2009) dictionary offers a more long-winded definition, which is the most extensive in the colloquial use of the term, and whose entry mentions that it is about the «improper appropriation of thoughts, ideas or similar of a third person in the artistic or research, and its publication. Theft of intellectual property; [legal language] intellectual theft, forgery».

The academic world

Academic plagiarism (akademisches Plagiat) in the German research arena has certain similarities with the more extensive meaning in the international community. Therefore, the definition of Fishman (2009) is often cited:

«Plagiarism occurs when someone:

• Uses words, ideas, or work products. 
• Attributable to another identifiable person or source.
• Without attributing the work to the source from which it was obtained.
• In a situation in which there is a legitimate expectation of original authorship.
• In order to obtain some benefit, credit, or gain which need not be monetary».

Therefore, it is a phenomenon with very specific characteristics.

Firstly, reproducing someone else’s text without quotation marks can be deemed academic plagiarism, as well as when any kind of periphrasis based on an original that is not cited is used.

Secondly, plagiarism is committed when the primary author is not sufficiently identified – in other words, when a direct attribution that would be expected by the reader does not appear. Thus, for example, when ideas from a work have been used, it would not be sufficient to include such work in the bibliography as another reference, but rather it would be necessary to always cite it on whichever pages the singular thoughts or ideas–are being used.

Lastly, it is not necessary for there to be financial gain, since the intention to obtain public recognition for apparently being the author of an idea or thought of a third party not named or insufficiently cited would be sufficient. Since 2014, it is no longer deemed essential for the subjective intention to deceive –which is always difficult to prove– to exist in order to qualify an act as academic plagiarism, but it would be necessary to argue this in order to deal with the case from a legal point of view.

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The board of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences decided that plagiarism (uncredited use of somebody else's words or ideas) in seminar papers and bachelor, master or diploma theses will be considered an attempt at deception in the sense of the respective examination regulations.

The wording of the decision is as follows:  

If, during the course of marking a bachelor, master or diploma thesis, plagiarism is suspected then it must be investigated. Software is available to assist the investigation. If it is found that plagiarism did occur, then the thesis must be marked as an attempt of deception, according to the respective examination regulation. If plagiarism occurs whthin a written examination it must also be marked as an attempt of deception, according to the respective examination regulation. Exceptions are not allowed.

A declaration has to be added to each homework, presentation or thesis, that the paper or thesis has been independently prepared, solely with the support of the listed literature references, and that no information has been presented that has not been officially acknowledged. | form for declaration

Furthermore the final digital text document (in the format doc, docx, odt, pdf or rtf) has to be transferred to the mentoring supervisor, the content and wording being entirely those of the paper or thesis. There is an analysis software program available for the supervisors to check the document for plagiarism.

• "How to avoid plagiarism"
• Declaration (German) (Examinations Office site for more information on submitting a final thesis )
• Plagiarism Recognition with Turnitin

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