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Plagiarism

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Plagiarism is a form of academic malpractice specifically referring to the use of another's information, language, or writing, when done without proper acknowledgment of the original source. Plagiarism is not necessarily the same as copyright infringement, which occurs when one violates copyright law.

Definition

Plagiarism is the use of another person’s work (this could be his or her words, products or ideas) for personal advantage, without proper acknowledgement of the original work. Most often the phrase is used to denote deliberate intent of passing it off as one's own work. Plagiarism may occur deliberately (with the intention to deceive) or accidentally (due to poor referencing). It encompasses copying material from a book, copying and pasting information from the World Wide Web, receiving help from unauthorized sources on coursework, and copying answers from a fellow student during an examination (presuming the copied work isn’t attributed). Plagiarism and cheating are not the same; cheating takes many forms, including but not limited to deliberate plagiarism.

Plagiarism is neither a criminal nor civil offense. In fact, plagiarism is not a legal term and is not legally recognised. However, breach of copyright or intellectual property rights (IPR) is illegal; acts of plagiarism that breach either of the former are illegal acts.

Plagiarising work that has no copyright (such as material that is out of copyright) constitute a breach of moral rights in jurisdictions where such rights are perpetual. In other jurisdictions, plagiarism becomes legal as soon as moral rights expire.

Referencing and attribution

There is some difference of opinion over how much credit must be given when preparing a newspaper article or historical account. Generally, reference is made to original source material as much as possible, and writers avoid taking credit for others' work. The use of mere facts, rather than works of creative expression, does not constitute plagiarism. For the latter, the issue of public domain works versus copyrighted works is irrelevant to the concept of plagiarism. For instance, it is legal for a student to copy several paragraphs (or even pages) of text from a public domain book, such as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and then directly add this text to his or her own paper. If this text were not clearly identified as to his or her source, then the student would be guilty of plagiarism, using another writer's work as if it were his or her own. High schools, colleges and universities are especially sensitive to plagiarism, and as a result, they implement academic codes of ethics (honor codes) which prohibit plagiarism in all its forms.

Similarly, it is considered plagiarism to take the specifics of someone else's novel idea, and then present it as one's own work. This type of plagiarism frequently occurs in high schools, colleges and universities, when, for example, students use the analyses in "CliffsNotes" and falsely present them as being their own original analysis. A small market has emerged of web sites offering essays and papers for sale to students, while a counter-industry has developed companies offering services for instructors to compare a student's papers to a database of sources and search for potential plagiarism.

Moreover, just as there can be plagiarism without lawbreaking, it is possible to violate copyright law without plagiarizing. For example, one could distribute the full text of a current bestseller on the Internet while giving clear credit for it to the original author, financially damaging the author and publisher.

According to some academic ethics codes and criminal laws, a complaint of plagiarism may be initiated or proven by any person. The person originating the complaint need not be the owner of the plagiarized content, nor need there be any active or passive communication from a content owner directing that any investigation or discipline process be initiated in response to the plagiarism.

It is not considered plagiarism when two (or more) people independently come up with the same idea or analysis. This is commonly termed simultaneous inspiration, and comes about as the logical result of people exposed to the same source material and interpreting it similarly.

There is also accidental plagiarism. One case involved a boy whose mother had repeatedly read to him a story as a very small child. Later in life he was writing a story for an assignment, and a story 'came to him', but the story turned out to be exactly that which his mother had read to him as a small child, though he had no recollection of her reading it to him.

However, due to their fear of litigation, many editors refuse to recognize any difference between either simultaneous or accidental inspiration and true plagiarism. In many academic settings intent does not even enter into consideration. Princeton dismisses intent as "irrelevant", and Doug Johnson says that intent is "not necessary for a work to be considered plagiaristic, and as one respondent put it, 'ignorance of the law is no excuse.' (Of course, this is a fallacy, as plagiarism is not even legally recognised as an offence.) Some universities will even revoke a degree retroactively if an alumnus' plagiarism comes to light within a year after graduation.

According to Diana Hacker, the citation criteria as specified by the MLA (Modern Language Association) (115), APA (American Psychological Association) (157-158), Chicago-Style (186), and others (228-230): "Three different acts are considered plagiarism: (1) failing to cite quotations and borrowed ideas, (2) failing to enclose borrowed language in quotation marks, and (3) failing to put summaries and paraphrases in your own words." A Pocket Style Manual, 4h ed., 2004 Bedford/St. Martin's.

Why plagiarism occurs

Students cite many reasons for plagiarising, including:

  1. being unaware that they’re plagiarising
  2. lacking knowledge and understanding of the subject
  3. poor time management skills
  4. feeling that the subject is unimportant
  5. believing that plagiarism isn’t serious
  6. feeling pressured due to over-assessment
  7. poor teaching
  8. they've done it before and not been caught

The most common reason given by students is ignorance about plagiarism – that they were unclear about the plagiarism policy and, therefore, unaware that they were doing anything wrong. Many school districts have a plagarism policy, which punishes students in increasing severity the more times that they're caught. A common misunderstanding among students relates to paraphrased material. Many students do not realise that paraphrased material should be attributed to the original author in the same manner as a direct quotation.

Some students do not consider plagiarism a serious offence since it does not (in their view) harm other students. Research has shown that students consider cheating in an examination to be much more serious than plagiarising coursework – even if both contribute to final grades.

Frequency of plagiarism

There is no definitive research into the frequency of plagiarism. Any research that has taken place has focussed on the Higher Education (university) sector. There are no published statistics for the school or college sectors; awarding bodies do not maintain statistics specifically on plagiarism. However, of all the different forms of cheating (including plagiarism, inventing data and cheating during an exam), students admit to plagiarism more than any other. Research findings range from 25% to 90% of students admitting to some form of plagiarism. However, this figure reduces considerably when students are asked about the frequency of “serious” plagiarism (such as copying most of an assignment or purchasing a complete paper from a website – more typically 20% and 10% respectively). Although research findings vary, a recurring theme is that students estimate the occurrence of plagiarism (in all its forms) higher than teaching staffs, which estimate its frequency higher than Academic Standards Committees. No reliable statistics exist for the school and college sectors; awarding bodies report low occurrences of plagiarism.

Plagiarism and the Internet

The widespread use of the Internet has increased the incidence of plagiarism. Students are able to use search engines to locate information on a wide range of topics. Once located, this information can be copied and pasted into students’ documents with minimal effort. Some sites provide free documents because they receive monetary support from sponsors. Other websites offer complete essays for students to download. These websites provide a database of subject-specific topics or custom-made essays on any topic (for a fee).

The Internet can also be used to combat plagiarism. Teachers can also use search engines to search for parts of suspicious essays. Using search engines to check papers for plagiarism, however, is neither practical nor effective since teachers lack the time necessary to check each paper by hand using an online search engine. For this reason, many teachers have turned to plagiarism prevention services like Turnitin that automate the search process and check essays for plagiarised material by comparing each paper against millions of online sources. The techniques used in such engines are often based on variants of the Rabin-Karp string search algorithm. Despite these counteractions, some empirical evidence suggests that the overall effect of the Internet is to increase plagiarism.

Internet plagiarism is not limited to academic dishonesty. Perhaps the most visible example occurred in late 2005 and early 2006 when the web site Ebaumsworld.com was accused of stealing and otherwise plagiarising a wide variety of various Flash animations from such web sites as SomethingAwful.com, sister site Fark.com and YTMND.com.

Self-plagiarism

Some define self-plagiarism as the act of copying one's own writing (or products or ideas) without due attribution of the source, i.e., oneself. For example, in academic assignments, self-plagiarism would be to submit the same assignment more than once in different contexts without publicising this fact. Many college professors regard this kind of plagarism as identical to a failure to cite an external source; in this view, plagiarism involves two principles: proper citation of sources, and originality of the work.

Famous examples of plagiarism

See also

  • The Assessment in Higher Education web site's plagiarism page contains links to a variety of resources (articles, books, cheat sites, etc) on plagiarism.
  • A new scholarly journal on the topic is "Plagiary: Cross-disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification." http://www.plagiary.org/

Anti-plagiarism software

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