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A client hired me and half way through I realized that the work was a violation of Upwork policy (essentially writing a big portion of an academic paper for them). What should I do?
Feb 18, 2018 09:17:33 AMEditedJun 20, 2021 05:51:07 AM by Renata S
Hi Sandia,
I'm not sure what you're working on, but it might depend on the situation. And I'm assuming it might be connected to an Academic Integrity issue. If your clients are students, the situation is more clearcut since they're supposed to be presenting their original thoughts (not yours) in the thesis (I'm attaching a pdf put out by the Editors Association of Canada, which outlines some of the issues. I don't necessarily ask people to sign this, but if I feel their expectations are beyond clarifying the content and fixing the grammar, I send it to potential clients).
I've discovered more recently that the situation with researchers is a bit different and is more complex. There seems to be a lot more grey area in terms of what you can hire a writer or an editor to do. I know in some big labs, graduate students may have the task of handling writeups for experiments (in addition to doing the lab work), but in this case, they should receive an author credit on the paper acknowledging their contribution.
Thank you for the reply. Yes, this is an academic dissertation and I had been asked to review over 50 other pieces of literature, summarize them, and write them into that section of the paper that had been partially written. I realized half way through that it might violate Upwork policy, but I wasn't sure what to do at that point, so I finished as best I could (instructions were also fairly vague, as in "here's my work so far, just finish the literature review portion"). Again, when I started I didn't know this was an upwork violation, but is there something I should do now?
As I mentioned, the instructions were really unclear from the start, so I just started by summarizing the literature. I've done article summaries before and it wasn't a big deal--didn't think of it as fraud in any way. But then later it became clearer that the client wanted me to insert them intto this paper in key places to where everything flowed between the client's original ideas and the summaries. So, geez, I can't really type out the whole sordid story here in 5 minutes, but rather than blaming me, I would like it if this community could help me on what, or if, I should be doing something at this point. Sheesh.
Quick question, if it wasn't against Upwork's TOS, but still constituted academic fraud, would that have made a difference as to whether you'd finish the project?
Feb 18, 2018 12:11:48 PMEditedFeb 18, 2018 12:13:37 PM by Janean L
@ Sandia -- People are asking very straightforward questions. In fact, I did not make any value judgements or even any statements of opinion as regards you. The fact that you are reacting to these questions as your being "crucified" and "blamed" is rather telling, I think.
Feb 18, 2018 12:31:20 PMEditedFeb 18, 2018 01:41:41 PM by Sandia M
@Kat No I haven't, but THIS is what I'm asking for (contacting customer service). How do I do this? I've seen where you can report a job BEFORE you are hired for it, but didn't know how to do this--THAT'S EXACTLY what I'm asking for help with. Thank you, how do I do this?
@Kat The "flag" part is what I had been looking for, but couldn't see that anywhere on a job that I was already hired for. I see it on newly posted jobs, but not MY contracts that I already have. I will try the customer service route, thank you for the help.
Feb 18, 2018 12:52:22 PMEditedFeb 18, 2018 12:54:05 PM by Kat C
Yep. Since you're already in a contract and you have evidentiary support for the TOS violation, CS is likely the best route. You'll be asked to provide screenshots as proof.
ETA: There's no function to report the job from the original posting after you've been hired (at least from the contracts screen; someone may have found another method to do this).
