If you've written a lot, you might have plagiarized a little
One thing to NEVER say in response to plagiarism accusations
In early 2025, I spoke with a panicked researcher whose article had been flagged for plagiarism during peer review.
“My group has never plagiarized,” she said. “Look through all of our work. There’s no plagiarism!”
I understood her frustration. The comment had been part of an otherwise quite positive reviewer response. The flagged section comprised three paragraphs of introductory material that were phrased too closely to the introductory sections of two of her group’s previous publications. (If you’re not in academia, yes, self-plagiarism is a thing [specifically, a thing you cannot do], primarily because the copyright of an article gets transferred to the publisher, so technically you’re reusing their text. I have opinions on this that I suspect many journals… and perhaps academics… would dislike, which I will save for another post).
In other words, it was an easy fix with paraphrasing and citations.
But the author was very caught up in the accusation. Understandably so, since plagiarism isn’t something any academic wants to be known for. It also feels like a personal attack when someone accuses you of doing something that goes against your moral code. You want to defend yourself. Prove them wrong.
She was concerned that the reviewer’s comment regarding “excessive similarities in the introduction section indicating plagiarism” would get out of the peer review process. “I read PubPeer,” she said, “I never thought I’d end up on it!“
We worked through the realities of the situation and how she wouldn’t end up on PubPeer for pre-publication errors in paraphrasing her own work. That reviewers aren’t in the habit of spreading information from the peer review process online.
The response to reviewers that we sent, which was well-received, contained this explanation:
Thank you for raising this concern. We would like to clarify that the passages in question draw on our previously published papers [citations]. The similarities reflect an overlap in framing, rather than unattributed use of others’ material. However, we fully agree that the current wording is too close to that in the earlier publications. Thus, we have substantially revised and paraphrased the affected paragraphs, and, where appropriate, cited the prior papers in a manner consistent with journal policy. Furthermore, we have reviewed the entire manuscript to ensure compliance with best practices regarding originality and citation.
The version she wanted to send also contained this:
We would also like to note that our research group has an established record of adherence to publication ethics and has never engaged in plagiarism.
I took it out.
Why?
Because “I/my group has never engaged in plagiarism” is the most dangerous thing you can say in response to plagiarism allegations.
It’s unlikely in this specific case that any of the reviewers would have scoured this researcher group’s previous work for citation errors, misattributions, or incidental similarities. However, if you’re accused of plagiarism publicly on a site like PubPeer or in the media (which is what happened in several high-profile cases, including Claudine Gay), and you issue an absolute denial, somebody might.
And they might find something.
Even if you’ve never intentionally plagiarized.
If something is found, you then have another issue. A credibility issue. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t intentionally acting in bad faith. The absolute denial in plagiarism cases is such a high-risk strategy because it (a) invites anyone (including those with not-so-great intent) to audit your entire publication history using plagiarism software and side-by-side comparisons and (b) allows them to frame minor oversights that would otherwise be addressable and correctable as proof that you are lying, that you’re covering something up, or that you exhibit a pattern of misconduct.
Simply put, the absolute denial gives you no room for error.
Absolute denials are legalistic responses to an ethical problem.
They raise the standard of proof against you and come across as defensive, which, unfortunately, makes people want to dig more and find out what you’re being so defensive about. It gives you absolutely no room to adapt your response as the situation evolves. “I’ve never plagiarized… apart from that part in that paper, and that section of that article… I can explain…” which is extremely difficult to reconcile credibly.
The reason someone might find something if they’re scouring your work, intentionally looking for something, is that if you’ve written a lot, the likelihood of unintentional overlap, imperfect paraphrasing, or citation error is… non-trivial.
We don’t always know when our thoughts aren’t our own. When we read a lot and/or write a lot, we internalize a lot of language from others and that we have written ourselves that may come back as a new ‘original’ idea sometime in the future… and we don’t recognize that we’ve read or said it before. This isn’t a new concept. I particularly like this quote, which I found in this article and was originally published here (see how I’m very intentionally trying not to plagiarize):
“...one of the most disheartening experiences of old age is discovering that a point you have just made—so significant, so beautifully expressed—was made by you in something you published a long time ago”
(May I quickly point out the use of the em dash in this quote, which is from 1983 and definitely NOT ChatGPT. I do miss being able to use those.)
If you’ve thought something was original but it was actually recalled, and recalled very specifically without attribution… you’ve unintentionally plagiarized. Perhaps controversial of me to say this, but it doesn’t really matter unless you’ve been accused of plagiarizing something else, someone wants to prove you’ve done it before, and you’ve said you never have.
There are also only so many ways to say certain things in niche academic fields. I’ve lost count of the number of ways I’ve tried to paraphrase the basic definition of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s also easy for paraphrases to end up closer to the original than you want them to be after multiple rounds of edits. Perhaps your editor has cleaned up the text to improve clarity, and it’s now exactly what the source material said… do you check every sentence against the source again after 10 people have made their changes to your file? Maybe. Probably not.
And then there’s citation errors and misattributions. You click the wrong source in EndNote. Two numbered citations get transposed. Now you’re misrepresenting source material, but you haven’t done it intentionally. Or a citation gets deleted in the editing process, you don’t notice, and now you’ve used someone else’s idea without attribution.
These errors above are correctable. They are not intentionally deceptive. The solution is to revise, cite, correct. Most plagiarism isn’t intentional.
But that doesn’t matter if someone is trying to build a case against you.
This is what people who are accused of plagiarism get wrong:
They defend against the wrong issue, and they do it forcefully.
The main reason a person accused of plagiarism makes the mistake of saying they’ve never plagiarized, thus eliminating their ability to credibly defend themselves if unintentional errors like the ones described above are found, is that they are fundamentally addressing the wrong thing.
Plagiarism is NOT the issue (in most cases).
The issue is integrity.
When you’re accused of plagiarism, your stakeholders (the journal, the editors, readers, your employers, your collaborators, your students etc.) aren’t looking to be told that you don’t plagiarize. They’re not asking, “Do you steal other people’s ideas?”, they’re asking, “Can I still trust you?” Subtly different things.
When you see plagiarism as the issue, that leads to a defensive “I don’t plagiarize” attempt to demonstrate perfection in a way that nobody could possibly think you would ever plagiarize. This is that defensiveness thing again, which tends to have the opposite effect of what you want. It undermines rather than builds trust.
They don’t actually want you to show perfection. They want you to show integrity.
So the goal is never to prove absolute innocence but to demonstrate openness, accountability, credibility, and integrity. Acknowledging the potential for unintentional errors is not an admission of misconduct. It shows that you are aware of the potential for error and capable of taking accountability for and correcting any incidental mistakes you may have made. It shows that you respect the process and are acting in good faith.
A better response reframes the situation around your values and the process. For example:
“I take attribution and originality seriously and have not knowingly presented someone else’s work as my own. As I have written extensively, I acknowledge the possibility of citation errors or unintentional phrasing that may resemble others’ in my work. If such mistakes are present, I am committed to correcting them. I am reviewing the concerns carefully and will address any legitimate issues with transparency.”
This type of response acknowledges the seriousness of the allegations without being overly defensive, it gives you room to address any errors that come up that you weren’t aware of by not trapping you with absolutist phrasing, it shows that you’re open to and committed to making corrections, and it makes your ethical values clear.
It also shows that you’re approaching the situation as a level-headed collaborator with an interest in truth and accuracy, not as someone who is under attack and seeing critics as automatic adversaries. It:
Affirms values
Acknowledges human fallibility
Commits to corrective action
This type of response answers that question your stakeholders have: Can we still trust you?
Because they don’t want you to say, “Nothing is wrong”.
They want you to say, “Here’s how I’ll handle this if something is wrong.”
Again, it’s quite a subtle difference, but it’s a difference that will determine whether the accusation becomes something that you overcome and use to strengthen your reputation and working relationships or something that defines you in all the ways you don’t want to be defined.