Understanding Postplagiarism: Ethics in the Digital Age

Explaining and Disentangling Foundational Concepts of Postplagiarism

In a recent interaction, someone told me that they objected to the idea of postplagiarism because, they argued, “stealing other people’s work and passing it off as one’s own is still wrong!”

Of course I agree that stealing others’ work and passing it off as one’s own is wrong. My work has been plagiarized and it feels terrible to see someone lift your words, verbatim and pass them off as their own with zero effort. 

Nevertheless, the comment got me thinking about what postplagiarism is and is not.

A Definition of Postplagiarism

In my 2023 editorial on postplagiarism, I offer this definition:

Postplagiarism refers to an era in human society in which advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and neurotechnology, including brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), are a normal part of life, including how we teach, learn, and interact daily.

Postplagiarism heralds a new era of intellectual engagement in the age of advanced technology.

Understanding what Postplagiarism is Not

Sometimes, in order to understand a thing, it can be helpful to understand what that thing is not, in the way that looking at the negative space in a photograph can help sharpen your focus on the subject of the photo.)

Here are three things that postplagiarism is not:

Postplagiarism is not giving permission for anyone to steal anyone else’s work and pass it off as their own. It is not a free-for-all where anyone using anyone else’s work without attribution is acceptable. One of the tenets of postplagiarism is that attribution continues to remain important.

Postplagiarism is not absolute relativism in which any form of knowledge and/or truth and/or reality is equally valid. The tenet of responsibility states that humans remain accountable and responsible, even when artificial intelligence tools have been used to generate content.

Postplagiarism is not about handing everything over to robots, throwing our hands up in the air and declaring that critical thinking is dead. On the contrary, I’d argue that copy-and-paste plagiarism can sometimes mean that a person has engaged in no critical thinking whatsoever. In my book, Plagiarism in Higher Education: Tackling Tough Topics in Higher Education, which is where I firs introduced the idea of postplagiarism, I talk about how addressing plagiarism through an educational lens, can help to improve academic literacy and critical thinking. Teaching people about digital literacy is more important now than ever before because misinformation, disinformation, and fabricated content is easier to generate than at any previous moment in history. In a postplagiarism era, critical thinking is more important than ever.

Concluding remarks

Postplagiarism is about humans learning to work with artificial intelligence in ethical and thoughtful ways that prioritize responsibility, respect, attribution. This requires careful thinking, teaching, learning, assessing, and communicating. Ultimately, as educators our job is to help our students be the best versions of themselves. One way we can do that is to set high expectations for them to engage in ethical decision-making, become agents of their own learning, and spark their curiosity for lifelong learning.

________

Share this post: Understanding Postplagiarism: Ethics in the Digital Age – https://postplagiarism.com/2025/01/02/understanding-postplagiarism-ethics-in-the-digital-age/

About the author: Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD, is a Professor in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary.