I wrote my PhD thesis a few years back. After I finished, my supervisor found another researcher and continued research along the same lines with the apparatus I built. I met this student a few times and gave them advice and help when I could. They always had a hard copy of my thesis in the lab for reference; I also provided a PDF copy at the student's request.

The student recently finished their PhD and I looked at their thesis. The lit review, results, and findings are the student's own work. But, particularly in the middle section (describing the apparatus I built):

• Many paragraphs of their text is copied and pasted from mine, some without checking so that it makes false references;
• In other instances, the student has substantially copied paragraphs, but changed a few words here and there;
• One that particularly annoyed me was the copying and awkward re-hashing of my acknowledgements to my supervisor, very personal words;

I informed my former supervisor (with whom I have a good relationship) and he seemed not to want to know. He said that as long as it wasn't the results then it wasn't too important. He reckoned as the student was a good guy, he may not have known what plagiarism was, and perhaps did it by accident. He did offer to acknowledge or include me in subsequent journal papers.

Given that only some of the background text (rather than the results section) was copied, is it reasonable to pursue this further? What is normally done in such cases?

In particular, I was thinking to quantify the level of copying involved and ask my supervisor to withdraw the thesis until copied material is removed. However, I risk jeopardizing a fairly good relationship with my supervisor and possibly also with the small network of colleagues.

I wrote my PhD thesis a few years back. After I finished, my supervisor found another researcher and continued research with the apparatus I built, but along a different line of study. I met this student a few times and gave them advice and help when I could. They always had a hard copy of my thesis in the lab for reference; I also provided a PDF copy at the student's request.

The student recently finished their PhD and I looked at their thesis. The lit review, results, and findings are the student's own work. But, particularly in the middle section (describing the apparatus I built):

• Many paragraphs of their text is copied and pasted from mine, some without checking so that it makes false references;
• In other instances, the student has substantially copied paragraphs, but changed a few words here and there;
• One that particularly annoyed me was the copying and awkward re-hashing of my acknowledgements to my supervisor, very personal words;

I informed my former supervisor (with whom I have a good relationship) and he seemed not to want to know. He said that as long as it wasn't the results then it wasn't too important. He reckoned as the student was a good guy, he may not have known what plagiarism was, and perhaps did it by accident. He did offer to acknowledge or include me in subsequent journal papers.

Given that only some of the background text (rather than the results section) was copied, is it reasonable to pursue this further? What is normally done in such cases?

In particular, I was thinking to quantify the level of copying involved and ask my supervisor to withdraw the thesis until copied material is removed. However, I risk jeopardizing a fairly good relationship with my supervisor and possibly also with the small network of colleagues.

I wrote my PhD thesis a few years back. After I finished, my supervisor found another researcher and began to use the experimental apparatus I created, with some modifications for their studies. I met this student a few times and gave them advice and help when I could. They always had a hard copy of my thesis in the lab for reference. Around a year ago, the student asked me for a pdf copy of my thesis. I hesitated a little as I wondered why they required a pdf copy as they already had the hard copy, but reckoned as my thesis is open access from the University online repository, it didnt make much difference so I sent it to them.

About a year later I was searching the library repository and noticed this student had been awarded their PhD thesis. I had a look at the results and conclusions and saw the new work they had come up with. However I checked one chapter (like the method section) and discovered they had included much of my own work verbatim. They even rewrote a particular piece of work I performed (word for word) and included it in their appendix. Many paragraphs of their text is copied and pasted from mine, some without checking so that it makes false references. In other instances, the student has substantially copied paragraphs, but changed a few words here and there. One that particularly annoyed me was the copying and awkward re-hashing of my acknowledgements to my supervisor, very personal words. Much of the copying is in the middle chapters where the student described the apparatus. The lit review, results and findings are the students own work.

I informed my former supervisor (with whom I have a good relationship) and he seemed not to want to know, and that as long as it wasn't the results then it wasn't too important. He reckoned as the student was a good guy, he may not have known what plagiarism was and perhaps did it by accident. He also offered to acknowledge/include me in subsequent journal papers for any results that I feel I deserve, but thats not applicable here as the research we performed is quite different.

I was thinking to quantify the level of copying involved, either either by manual comparison, or by run both theses through Turnitin, (this didnt work very well and didnt detect the most obvious copied sections).

If the copied content level was high enough, I was thinking to pass this information onto my supervisor again and ask if the thesis can be withdrawn and edited to remove any copied material. However I risk jeopardizing a fairly good relationship with my supervisor and possibly also with the small network of colleagues.

I have two questions...

1 If its not related to the actual results but only to apparatus, methods, descriptions, then it is "plagiarism" for sure, but as my supervisor intimated, its not at an important enough level for me to be making something of it?

2 Do many other researchers stay silent and weather this rather than bring it out in the open, press for action, and deal with the consequences (loss of relationships, network etc)

Thank you. Creed

I wrote my PhD thesis a few years back. After I finished, my supervisor found another researcher and continued research along the same lines with the apparatus I built. I met this student a few times and gave them advice and help when I could. They always had a hard copy of my thesis in the lab for reference; I also provided a PDF copy at the student's request.

The student recently finished their PhD and I looked at their thesis. The lit review, results, and findings are the student's own work. But, particularly in the middle section (describing the apparatus I built):

• Many paragraphs of their text is copied and pasted from mine, some without checking so that it makes false references;
• In other instances, the student has substantially copied paragraphs, but changed a few words here and there;
• One that particularly annoyed me was the copying and awkward re-hashing of my acknowledgements to my supervisor, very personal words;

I informed my former supervisor (with whom I have a good relationship) and he seemed not to want to know. He said that as long as it wasn't the results then it wasn't too important. He reckoned as the student was a good guy, he may not have known what plagiarism was, and perhaps did it by accident. He did offer to acknowledge or include me in subsequent journal papers.

Given that only some of the background text (rather than the results section) was copied, is it reasonable to pursue this further? What is normally done in such cases?

In particular, I was thinking to quantify the level of copying involved and ask my supervisor to withdraw the thesis until copied material is removed. However, I risk jeopardizing a fairly good relationship with my supervisor and possibly also with the small network of colleagues.