Will the real author come forward? Questions of ethics, plagiarism, theft and collusion in academic research writing.

This paper raises some questions about academic authorial honesty under the headings of Plagiarism (including self-plagiarism), Theft, and Collusion. Compared with the medical sciences, the social sciences in general and education specifically, lag behind in terms of critical attention being paid to the problem of plagiarism, the peer review process and academic authorial ethics. The ubiquity of the Internet, the ever intensifying demand to publish or perish, and maybe, a general shift in perceptions of what constitutes 'bad' plagiarism and collusion which challenge traditional notions of what constitutes authorial honesty, mean that the time may be ripe for a consideration by academic writers and journal editors of how they regard and deal with the whole area. This paper makes an early contribution to the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]