Carol Haviland, Joan Mullin, and their collaborators report on a three-year interdisciplinary interview project on the subject of plagiarism, authorship, and “property,” and how these are conceived across different fields. The study investigated seven different academic fields to discover disciplinary conceptions of what types of scholarly production count as “owned.”

Less a research report than a conversation, the book offers a wide range of ideas, and the chapters here will provoke discussion on scholarly practice relating to intellectual property, plagiarism, and authorship---and to how these matters are conveyed to students. Although these authors find a good deal of consensus in regard to the ethical issues of plagiarism, they document a surprising variety of practice on the subject of what ownership looks like from one discipline to another. And they discover that students are not often instructed in the conventions of their major field.

Carol Peterson Haviland is professor of English, at California State University, San Bernardino. She is co-editor of "Teaching/Writing in the Late Age of Print" and "Weaving Knowledge Together: Writing Centers and Collaboration".

Joan Mullin is chair of English studies at Illinois State University, as well as a consultant-evaluator for the Association of Writing Program Administrators. Her Work appears in disciplinary national and international publications.