Research paper - translated plagiarism?

Question

I'm writing a research paper in my native language, Serbian, on a specific electrical engineering and applied mathematics topic. Moreover, there are two published papers in English that hold much of the information I need.

Now, the topic itself is quite new and is unknown in Serbia, and consequently at my university. My plan is to sum up the results of the two papers, further expand on the theory behind it (which is only arbitrarily mentioned in the English papers), and finally encapsulate the whole idea.

So, strictly speaking, I won't be doing any original research, in terms of experiments or mathematical breakthroughs, but rather synopsize and provide a desired perspective on a modern topic that is novel to my national academic environment.

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Q: If I reference the two English papers and their authors at the end of the paper, do I commit plagiarism?

For example, if I see a nice sentence in one of the papers, and I translate it into my paper, are the references at the end enough for crediting the author?

Finally, is using the pictures from the two papers (with referencing them naturally) accepted practice? Or do I need to get the authors' permission to use them?

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Furthermore, does my paper still hold some kind of value, even though it doesn't provide original results? At the very least, it introduces a new, and very interesting topic to my faculty, and is generally a field I'm interested in researching, and eventually achieving some real and relevant results.

Answer 1

Referencing the papers at the end is not sufficient.

Generally, the litmus test whether or not something is plagariasm is whether the reader is given an adequate impression of how much of the text is other peoples work. Readers don't always read entire papers, and in particular may not make it to the end.

In your case, I would suggest to state at the beginning what your two main sources are, and give some indication of how heavily you are drawing from them. Then, throughout the paper reference each bit you've taken from elsewhere by where it is coming from.

Answer 2

Your paper lies somewhere between

• a true translation, much like how a book in one language might be translated into another. In such a case, the article is usually credited to the original authors, with a note mentioning who did the translation

• a review article that surveys some fragment of the literature, possibly adding a larger perspective to the material being presented.

In my view, your work is closer to the latter than the former, especially if what you're trying to transmit in Serbian are the ideas in the papers, and not the literal words.

What might therefore be your best option is to convey the ideas in the works, clearly marked (for example a section header, or even some introductory text saying what you're doing), but without any need to cite specific translations (unless the occasional turn of phrase is so useful that you might as well put it in quotes).

In this case, you're clearly not plagiarizing, since credit is being given clearly and copiously.

I'm not sure about the copyright issues involved in reproducing pictures. Fair use should cover use of a few pictures (but IANAL). In any case, it's the copyright holder who needs to be asked (and this might be the authors, or the publisher: the paper should have a note about this).

Does such a document have value ? Well based on the context you describe, sure ! If it helps an audience gain access to material they'd otherwise be unfamiliar with or unable to read, definitely. This is no different from other review articles in other disciplines, and has the added bonus of language translation.