[Birds-of-a-Feather] Understanding and Handling Software Plagiarism in the Age of Generative AI
Location
School of Law Seminar Room 3.09
Start Date
4-6-2026 1:30 PM
End Date
4-6-2026 2:30 PM
Description
Computing and software have supported research since their inception, and continue to play a significant role in knowledge production. However, the means of communicating research methods and results were developed long before computing existed, and the research community lacks best practices for documenting computational research elements transparently, reproducibly, and reusably.
Publishers are now more accepting of the inclusion of software (typically, source code) associated with submitted manuscripts, and many want to support processes to vouch for the integrity of software just as they do for other content, such as ensuring that ethical and legal concerns such as authorship, plagiarism, copyrights and licensing are addressed fairly and consistently. However, unlike debates about originality and access to scholarly text, ethical and legal debates about research software are still in their infancy.
This BOF will discuss code plagiarism, which is not typically part of responsible conduct of research or research integrity training. Given how common it is among programmers to share and reuse code, it is not even clear what exactly constitutes code plagiarism. Software licensing is also more complicated than for text and data, mostly due to the more complex interactions and usage scenarios. The rise of AI-powered coding tools takes these challenges to a new level.
Although COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) was quick to respond to the increased use of AI in writing papers through issuing positions and guidelines on Authorship and AI tools, so far no authoritative organization has adopted a serious position on the rise of AI use in research software development and the associated ethical issues. Following the success of the FORCE11-COPE working group in formulating the COPE data ethics guidelines, we support a similar group of experts and interested parties to create similar guidelines for software-AI-ethics. COPE has already signalled their interest.
[Birds-of-a-Feather] Understanding and Handling Software Plagiarism in the Age of Generative AI
School of Law Seminar Room 3.09
Computing and software have supported research since their inception, and continue to play a significant role in knowledge production. However, the means of communicating research methods and results were developed long before computing existed, and the research community lacks best practices for documenting computational research elements transparently, reproducibly, and reusably.
Publishers are now more accepting of the inclusion of software (typically, source code) associated with submitted manuscripts, and many want to support processes to vouch for the integrity of software just as they do for other content, such as ensuring that ethical and legal concerns such as authorship, plagiarism, copyrights and licensing are addressed fairly and consistently. However, unlike debates about originality and access to scholarly text, ethical and legal debates about research software are still in their infancy.
This BOF will discuss code plagiarism, which is not typically part of responsible conduct of research or research integrity training. Given how common it is among programmers to share and reuse code, it is not even clear what exactly constitutes code plagiarism. Software licensing is also more complicated than for text and data, mostly due to the more complex interactions and usage scenarios. The rise of AI-powered coding tools takes these challenges to a new level.
Although COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics) was quick to respond to the increased use of AI in writing papers through issuing positions and guidelines on Authorship and AI tools, so far no authoritative organization has adopted a serious position on the rise of AI use in research software development and the associated ethical issues. Following the success of the FORCE11-COPE working group in formulating the COPE data ethics guidelines, we support a similar group of experts and interested parties to create similar guidelines for software-AI-ethics. COPE has already signalled their interest.