Chris Park’s Work on Author’s Rights and the Ethics of Sharing Without Consent
The rise of digital learning environments has amplified ethical concerns surrounding the ownership and sharing of intellectual work. Professor Chris Park, a scholar from Lancaster University, made significant contributions to understanding plagiarism, authorship, and students’ responsibilities regarding others’ work. His publications—especially “In Other (People’s) Words” (2003) and “Rebels Without a Clause?” (2004)—offer an enduring theoretical framework on authorial integrity and the moral dimension of academic authorship. This paper critically analyses Park’s contributions to the discourse on authors’ rights and examines the implications of sharing academic work without consent within teacher education and higher learning contexts.
1. Introduction
In an era of easy information access and digital collaboration, the line between legitimate academic sharing and intellectual theft has blurred. Academic dishonesty extends beyond plagiarism to include the unauthorised sharing of others’ assignments, infringing upon the moral and legal rights of the original author. Chris Park’s research remains foundational to understanding how authorship, consent, and intellectual ownership operate within academic culture (Park, 2003). His work situates plagiarism and unauthorised sharing within a wider discourse on academic values, responsibility, and the ethics of learning.
2. Authorial Integrity and Intellectual Property
Park (2003) proposed that academic authorship is grounded in two key principles:
Acknowledgement of intellectual ownership, and
Respect for the creator’s moral right to control how their work is used and reproduced.
He argued that plagiarism and unauthorised sharing both represent violations of authorial integrity, since they disregard the individual’s control over their intellectual output. Park noted that universities often overemphasised detection and punishment rather than cultivating understanding of why authorship and consent matter. He urged institutions to “promote moral reasoning about authorship, not merely compliance with citation rules.”
3. Sharing Without Consent as Ethical Misconduct
Park (2003) framed the unauthorised sharing of another person’s work as a form of plagiarism by distribution—even when the sharer does not directly claim authorship. Sharing a peer’s assignment without permission breaches two moral dimensions:
Breach of trust: The author entrusts their work to an academic institution or peer for legitimate educational purposes, not for redistribution.
Violation of consent: Authors retain moral rights over how, where, and by whom their work is used. Sharing their work without explicit approval disregards those rights, similar to intellectual property infringement.
In this light, when students in teacher education circulate assignments without consent, they violate the ethical principles of honesty, fairness, and respect—values central to both academia and professional teaching practice.
4. Educational Context: From Policy to Pedagogy
In “Rebels Without a Clause?” Park (2004) criticised universities for failing to integrate discussions of authorship and consent into teaching. He asserted that plagiarism prevention policies often lack pedagogical depth, focusing instead on deterrence. He proposed an educational model of integrity, in which understanding authors’ rights becomes part of the learning process. Park’s framework suggests that educators should explicitly teach:
The difference between collaboration and collusion.
The ethical and legal implications of copying, distributing, or adapting another’s work.
Respect for the moral rights of authors as an integral component of professional development.
In teacher education, this has particular relevance. Future teachers must both model ethical behaviour and teach students about intellectual honesty. When trainees share assignments without consent, they not only compromise their own integrity but also undermine their credibility as moral educators.
5. Park’s Concept of “Learning Cultures”
A significant contribution of Park’s work lies in his notion of learning cultures. He observed that students’ attitudes toward authorship often reflect cultural understandings of knowledge ownership. In some educational contexts, knowledge is viewed as communal rather than individual, leading to unintentional breaches of Western academic norms (Park, 2003). Park therefore advocated for cross-cultural education on authorship and consent, recognising that respect for intellectual property must be taught contextually, not assumed.
6. Implications for Teacher Education
Park’s ideas are especially pertinent in teacher education, where professionalism and ethics intersect.
Model ethical scholarship: Teacher educators must demonstrate respect for authorship by obtaining consent before sharing student work.
Promote awareness: Trainee teachers should be taught that unauthorised sharing constitutes both academic and ethical misconduct.
Develop reflective ethics: Teacher preparation should integrate discussions on intellectual property, moral rights, and fairness to help future teachers become ethical role models in their own classrooms.
These approaches align with the principles of fairness, honesty, and respect established in frameworks such as the QAA (2020) Academic Integrity Guidelines and Bretag’s (2019) six core values of integrity.
7. Conclusion
Chris Park’s work remains a cornerstone of academic integrity scholarship. By conceptualising authorship as both a moral and intellectual right, Park (2003, 2004) reoriented the discussion of plagiarism toward ethical understanding and personal responsibility. His insights extend beyond citation practices to the ethics of sharing and consent, urging universities to treat integrity as a moral education. For teacher education, Park’s legacy is especially instructive: educators must both respect and teach respect for the ownership of intellectual work. Unauthorised sharing, therefore, is not merely a breach of academic rules—it is a violation of the trust and respect that underpin the teaching profession.
References
Park, C. (2003). In other (people’s) words: Plagiarism by university students—literature and lessons. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 28(5), 471–488.
Park, C. (2004). Rebels without a clause: Towards an institutional framework for dealing with plagiarism by students. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 28(3), 291–306.
Bretag, T. (2019). A Research Agenda for Academic Integrity. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA). (2020). Contracting to Cheat in Higher Education: How to Address Contract Cheating and Essay Mills.
