More on the Minnesota plagiarism matter

In discussing the plagiarism issue as to two college presidents in Minnesota, Maura Lerner has text

--
The problem arises, says Anderson, when the wording is too close to the original. “You not only need to cite the [source], but you need to use the quotation marks when you’re using exact phrases,” she said. That’s not just common courtesy, she says; “there’s actually a federal policy on research misconduct” that covers plagiarism.



--

To be clear, there is no federal law making plagiarism actionable. Plagiarism and copyright infringement are distinct matters. And policies relating to federal grant recipients are generally not going to apply to writers of Ph.D. theses.

The Minnesota matter seems to have political overtones, as did the earlier Poshard matter at SIU.

Merely in passing, if Minnesota were to apply the standards used by U Va against Allison Routman, the presidents would likely be gone.