How Does Ownership and Academic Integrity Impact Readers?
The chapter begins with a personal anecdote on embroidery. Did it prompt you to think of the disciplinary interests, character traits, and writing style of the author? Pause and list a few interests or life experiences of this author that you can guess from reading this chapter.
Activity 2
Complete the sentence below.
The author is interested or experienced in …
Your list of observations show that a writer’s voice can persuade readers or make them think or act in specific ways. For example, the chapter opens with a personal anecdote on embroidery and that may prompt readers to infer that I am interested in it. Readers, therefore, develop a stance (perceptions, impressions) in response to a text. This shared aspect of writer’s and reader’s voice influences ownership of the text. Subliminal cues (for example, the use of parenthesis, italics, organization of text) and quotations or paraphrases (primary and secondary references) are ways to show textual ownership and maintain academic integrity.
If the reader-writer relationship is key to ownership, then it is also important to understand what happens to ownership when it lacks academic integrity. A student needing to paraphrase articles and put them in their own words to avoid being accused of plagiarism might be tempted to use an online “article spinner.” As a writer, however, the student stands to lose their voice and identity. This fracturing of one’s personalized and credible space is easily noticed by teachers who can recognize an abrupt shift in language use and writing style. Online text spinners also perform a mechanical task of replacing words or phrases with synonyms that constitute similar sounding sentences. However, they often misinterpret the original author’s intention and as a result, your argument shows lack of insight. The text becomes vulnerable to gaps in understanding.
The following example presents three versions of the same text: (i) direct quotation from an academic journal article (original text), (ii) Spinbot’s (an online article spinner) version of the quote, and (iii) a paraphrase of the same excerpt (which meets academic integrity standards).
Table 1. Three versions of the same text
| Quote from Abu Arqoub et al.’s (2020) article: Original text |
Spinbot’s rewritten version: Machine paraphrased text |
Suggested paraphrase: Meets academic integrity standards |
| Despite the historical imprecision surrounding fake news, historical accounts have illustrated the visibility of the relationship between politics and falsified news. Over the years, the media, especially the press affiliates of political parties, have disseminated one-sided opinions and a great deal of information lacking credibility (p. 1). | In spite of the authentic imprecision encompassing phony news, verifiable records have represented the perceivability of the connection among governmental issues and distorted news. Over the years, the media, particularly the press associates of ideological groups, have dispersed uneven assessments and a lot of data lacking validity. | Abu Arqoub et al.’s (2020) article shows that fake news, despite uncertainty about its historical origin, has been part of political discourse for long. Over time, the spread of misinformation by biased media groups has become a common political strategy. |
When listed side by side in Table 1, it is easy to notice that all three versions of the academic text are about the same length, attempt to offer similar information, and use a formal academic voice. A closer look at the five underlined phrases in the original and machine generated text shows how language has been altered while maintaining the sentence pattern and order of information. A comparison of the phrases below further reveals how the original argument is distorted or misinterpreted by Spinbot. For instance, the article spinner’s choice of “authentic imprecision” is an incorrect reading of “historical imprecision” related to the origin of fake news. Similarly, “historical” does not imply “verifiable” here. Also, not all “ideological groups” have political affiliation – hence, the term is not synonymous with “political parties.”
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Spinbot generated synonyms |
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| “historical imprecision” | → | authentic imprecision |
| “surrounding fake news” | → | encompassing phony news |
| “historical accounts” | → | verifiable records |
| “visibility of the relationship between politics and falsified news” | → | perceivability of the connection among governmental issues and distorted news |
| “political parties” | → | ideological groups |
Text spinners that offer functions similar to Spinbot have been identified by researchers (such as Prentice & Kinden, 2018) as problematic because they may be considered an intentional attempt towards academic dishonesty. Imprecise collocations and synonyms lead to “unintelligible” (Ibid. p. 13) texts and question the authorship of the text. Importantly, the researchers note that proficient readers can detect such anomalies and associate odd terminologies or word choices as indicators of the writer’s lack of competence. Thus, originality of voice is directly related to ownership whereas machine-assisted paraphrasing can erase an author’s identity and integrity, which is perceived as academic dishonesty.
