Authorship, Ethics and Fairness
The process of writing is also a process of finding your own voice to communicate ideas and arguments. Especially proofreading is informed by the idea of the transcendent author as it aims at developing a unique style or distancing oneself from the text. Students are told that self-reflection and creative expression are an essential part of writing.
Authorship, Ethics and Fairness
When you give your work to a friend or a professional proofreader, their remarks, additions and suggestions will influence you as a writer. Especially in-depth, extensive proofreading of style and structure might add substantial changes to texts. Writing is thus a way of self-expression but at the same time a collective, distributed process. These collective dynamics even start before the actual writing when students discuss their ideas will colleagues and get new inspiration from their remarks.Our theory of proofreading is very much anchored n the idea of 'the author', the transcendental writer who is laying down the text to see it from the perspective of a stranger ... So, if someone else proofreads your essay, have you surrendered authorship of the text? Is somebody else taking control of it? I mean, should you really let other people proofread your essays?
MA Creative Industries student from the UK
Issues around ethics and fairness
Proofreading by friends, colleagues or professionals might open up new perspectives on your own writing, but can also create ethical problems or problems of fairness. There is the danger that if someone else changes your work, it will be seen as cheating as it is no longer a text written by you. It is difficult to draw a clear line where proofreading stops and where cheating starts but students have to be aware that the majority of thoughts and phrases in their text should be their own - and not added by their proofreader. Members of staff are aware of the conflicts students are facing: On the one hand tutors demand well-written texts without mistakes, on the other hand they do not want to exercise surveillance over the process of writing. Within this framework, the responsibility is placed on the students to draw a line between supportive proofreading and cheating.
Amongst students and especially among non-native speakers professional proofreading is not always seen as a fair process. Some international students who feel insecure about their writing skills might not immediately have a reliable peer-proofreading network or the money to pay a professional proofreader. They have to depend on their own skills whereas students who are financially well off and have the right contacts to professional proofreaders can improve their writing. In this context, improving your writing by employing professional proofreaders is considered as unfair behaviour and cheating by some students.
Proofreading is not really a fair process ... A friend of mine once let me read his papers and they were written very well. He has asked someone else to proofread them but told me that the proofreader did not change much. One day he wrote a cover letter and I got to read it. It was written very badly and made me wonder how much people actually get their writing changed. If you get a higher mark just because someone made your sentences sound better, then I think this is not fair. There are so many non-native students that getting better marks just because one can afford paid proofreading should not be the point.
MA Global Media student from the Netherlands