TWO PROBLEMS: Phone taken in exam hall and accidentally plagiarised my own paper

sarah333

Hi everyone.

this is going to seem absolutely ridiculous but it's exam time and everyone's stressed and not thinking and thus I have two questions.

The first is that I accidentally took my phone into the exam hall, got caught with it and got it confiscated, and am wondering if anyone has had that happen to them and has any idea if there are likely to be repercussions? I obviously wasn't cheating, and there's nothing on the phone to indicate I was but they wouldn't let me know anything more and just said to wait for an email to get it back.

The second is that I've just realised that I submitted identical paragraphs in two essays I wrote for different subjects, and it's come up on safe assign as plagiarising from another student's paper. The essays are on different topics but there is one overlapping topic, and it hadn't occurred to me that it wasn't allowed to submit the same paragraph in two essays. If anyone knows if you're likely to get in trouble for plagiarising from yourself please let me know too. Thanks!

Maldesu

I have taken my phone into the hall twice so far. It's fine if you leave it on the floor. Where did you have the phone and was it switched on?


How UCD defines Self plagiarism :

Self-plagiarism occurs when an author, usually an academic, reuses or recycles portions of their own previously published work, without any reference or attribution to the original publication. For example re-presenting material at conferences, or publishing very similar or identical work without acknowledging the original work. Many academic journals have codes of ethics which specifically refer to self-plagiarism, while others use a more standard reference to plagiarism. Self plagiarism is ddetrimental to research community; it wastes financial resources – through journal subscriptions, Inter Library Loans, causes time wasting; and results in a cluttering of the pool of research

If it comes up, you may be best being straight with them but ask them for the policy on it. If they give you that, you can say that your work has not been published and you wouldn't have a clue how to reference your own non published material.

You probably will have to wait and see if they get in touch with you but its no harm to be prepared for the questions that might occur. Hopefully someone else will have a better answer for you.

Sad Professor

How did it get confiscated? I've been bringing my phone into exams for 3 years. I turn it off and leave it in my pocket.

As for the identical paragraphs, what was the overall match for the essay on SafeAssign? Unless it's unusually high, chances are your lecturer won't even look at it. But a whole paragraph would probably the increase the match significantly.

sarah333

Thanks so much for the responses!

With the phone, out of complete stupidity I went to the bathroom and when they asked did I have anything in my pockets I felt in them and said straight away "oh sorry my phone, I completely forgot to take it out". It was turned on because I had completely forgotten it was there, but there was nothing incriminating on it whatsoever, and no credit either. They said it happens a lot so just wondering had anyone else had the same thing happen.

With the essay it came up as 40% matching which is unusually high. To be honest we got a chance to completely choose the topic for a research essay for one of the subjects ourselves, and when I looked at it in less detail (the one paragraph) for the first subject I thought the area was interesting and decided to write a whole essay on it for the other subject so used the original paragraph as an introduction. One was a 4500 word one but the other was only 2000 which is why the percentage has come up so high on that one. Just not sure if I should preemptively email the lecturer and explain that I wrote theirs first and was so interested in the subject I decided to look at it in more detail in another class, or wait for them to contact me. It completely didn't occur to me that this was plagiarism, because one is so much more in depth than the other, whilst the other deals with a lot more issues than the first one.

xxkarenxx

I think it really depends on the lecturer and their policy. Did they say it had to be original work that had never been submitted before? My course takes that stance, we can use the same topic and references for a number of modules but it has to be entirely new work for each module if that makes sense.

I would email the lecturer to say what has happened. It's no harm in being up front about it. I was worried that one of my assignments would be plagiarising myself as we had been told that it is possible to be caught and it can be a problem. The fact that it is a whole paragraph that is identical may go against you though as they may see it as having just copied and pasted from one essay into another. Best bet is be up front in my experience.

Good luck!

gradlife

Your phone will be checked and if there's nothing on it there will be no problem. It's not like you were caught receiving answers. If you had been caught using it in the bathroom that would be a different story. So no stress there.

The plagiarism thing I wouldn't stress too much about either. They just email the lecturer, it really isn't that big a deal I'd stay the absolute worst he will make you do would be to re-do the assignment.

AdamD

They don't care about phones once you turn it off and put it on the floor, I do it every exam.

im invisible

yeah, and don't use the exact same paragraph in two different essays, and you'll be grand:rolleyes:

Chet T16

I'd love to see the hilarity that would follow them discovering 3 years of material in dropbox on my phone.

Pedant

I don't think the issue with submitting the same paper twice via safe assign will be a problem. You have your student number, name, etc., on the paper so they can prove it was yours, you should be okay. Just make sure to e-mail the lecturer about it.