25 Things About Plagiarism That Are Unknown to You If you are reading this, you are probably trying your best to maintain academic integrity and follow the academic rules that strictly curb plagiarism. Fortunately, you have landed on a right resource that will steer you clear of plagiarism. It is true that that you need to devote quite a bit of energy to exclude the possibility of plagiarism in your academic text. Reading this resource will make your task slightly easier and enable you to dodge the pitfalls of plagiarism. Here we have gathered certain interesting and mustknow facts related to plagiarism so that you can learn about the preventative measures. Read on to know how you can avoid plagiarism in your assignments, dissertation , thesis and coursework.
25 basic, statistical and conceptual facts about plagiarism While writing, you must give credit wherever you use information, facts or data from the sources you found, unless it is common knowledge. You already know this part or have been told by your senior or instructors many times. But we bet you were not aware of the following facts about plagiarism.
Basic
1. Text with references also accounts for plagiarism. Yes, if the ideas are included from another source and references are present, but the text is a direct quote from that source without quotation mark, the references alone do not suspend the possibility of plagiarism. You should have a quotation mark to signal that the ideas were borrowed.
2. The urge to avoid plagiarism teaches you to present your ideas better. When you refer to one source, you start to think that the writer has already said so much on the topic that you should just paraphrase its words. And you eventually fall into the trap of plagiarism. But when you seek information from different sources, you get more unique ways to present YOUR ideas instead of that of the writers’.
3. Using other people’s ideas does not invite plagiarism if you understand one’s idea well enough and explain it in your own words. You can further use it in your own thought. This is how you should research over your assignment topic and gather sources.
4. Common English phrases do not account for plagiarism. Some English phrases are so common that they will appear in the writing of different people. Plagiarism only arises when a string of work or a thought long enough to reflect one’s personality is used.
5. To avoid plagiarism, you don’t have to find ideas that no one has ever thought of. You are also not required to give references for ideas and facts that everyone is aware of. Plagiarism problem arises when your presented idea is “so unusual” that it ends up matching the expression of an author in another text. Your instructor can easily detect that you have copied it.
6. Unacceptable paraphrasing can lead you to the sin of committing plagiarism. In your mind, paraphrasing is the most efficient solution to plagiarism. You may have changed the text, but the sentence structure and much of the wording match the source. Besides, your writing is too similar to the source. Then it cannot be counted as original. Let’s take an example: An excerpt from an essay of 1995 titled „Teaching Mark Twain‟s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn‟, composed by Dr. Shelly Fisher Fishkin, faculty member of University of Texas. “It is impossible to read Huckleberry Finn without understanding that Mark Twain‟s awareness and
consciousness is larger than that of any character in the novel, including Huck. Indeed, the part of the novel that illustrates how Huck is too innocent and ignorant to understand what‟s wrong with the society and what‟s right about his own transgressive behavior.” Unacceptable Paraphrasing: “It is difficult to read Huck Finn without understanding that the author‟s unconsciousness is bigger than any of the book‟s characters, even Huck. One of the things that make reading so enjoyable is that Huck remains blind to the ills of the society or to the things that are good about his rebellious behavior.”
7. Connecting words from different sources, although in your idea, without citing the source is also plagiarism. To make your writing more vivid, you can refer to different sources and interweave them together almost word-to-word in your own ideas. But later on, if you did not feel the need for acknowledging or citing the sources, it results in a plagiarized material.
Conceptual: 8. There’s a marked difference between paraphrasing and summarizing. Paraphrasing involves reformulating a part of text, a quote or restating a section of text, a point taken from a discrete section of the text to reflect the writing style of the author. On the other hand, a summary involves trimming of a large portion of text, perhaps even an entire chapter, to key points to make the readers understand the central idea of the text.
9. A mix of credited and unaccredited quotations also leads to plagiarism. When you use quotation marks around some of the works, it is the correct way to treat the words that are copied exactly. However, if you fail to pay attention to more such words that you have copied exactly from the source and left them without putting quotation mark around them, the entire thing is considered as plagiarized.
10. Plagiarism does not arise when you cite generic information. But students remain confused when they are asked what constitutes common or generic knowledge. Here is an example, the Wikipedia.org article on George Lucas does not include a footnote citation for his full name (George Walton Lucas, Jr.) and his birthday (May 14, 1944) because these facts are publicly available even if it is not something one would know or remember.
11. Making a quote on your own may result in plagiarism.
Technically it is not plagiarism. However, plagiarism tends to appear due to lack of creativity. Making up quote or sources is the reflection of surfeit creativity that also cannot be considered.
12. Using your own work for the second time can lead to plagiarism. If you don’t want to see yourself going into trouble by paraphrasing your own words, you better spend time to cite your sources properly.
13. Citing sources wrongly can be a form of plagiarism too. Unfortunately, failing to give the credits to the author includes you under the act of plagiarism. But policies may vary from class to class. To ensure the consequences, you need to talk to your instructor.
14. Information from public domains and sources without author name also requires citation. When you are using information from the public domains and/or the work that has no author name attached to it, you mostly go ignorant about citing those resources. Don’t be. If you are borrowing ideas or using ideas garnered from the work of someone or somewhere, it should receive attribution, regardless the author is unknown or the domain is publically used.
15. Hyperlinking is not a desirable form of citation. You may have given a thought about using hyperlinks as attribution. But remember, it can create problems under such circumstances where hyperlinks get deactivated or erased. In an academic setting, it is advisable not to use a hyperlink as a form of citation in your writing.
16. Too much of cited text has to be relevant. Sometimes students wonder how much cited text they can use in their writing. Technically the answer depends on the assignment and purpose of the citations. For example, if you are writing an analysis of a poem, using the entire poem in your writing won’t serve you well. So you have to use it according to relevance.
Statistical: 17. Students readily confess to plagiarism. A survey on 63,000 US undergraduate and 9,250 graduate conducted by Donald McCabe, Rutgers University revealed the following facts:
32 percent undergraduates confessed to paraphrasing/copying few sentences from internet source without citing them.
38 percent students admitted to paraphrasing/copying few sentences from written source without citing them. 7 percent students reported of copying material almost word-to-word from a written source without citing them. The same poll revealed that 16.5 percent of them did not regret it.
18. Plagiarism is rising at an alarming rate. Most college presidents (55 percent of them) say that plagiarism in the students’ papers has increased over the past 10 years.
19. Virtual knowledge is leading to increased plagiarism. Those who have seen the gradual rise of plagiarism, 89 percent of them comment that computers and internet has had a grave influence on the rise of plagiarism.
20. Plagiarism shockers. Among the famous cases of plagiarism, there are two big examples:
US vice-president Joe Biden withdrew his nomination for Democratic Presidential nomination in 1988 due to the accusation of committing plagiarism in law school 23 years ago. Senator Rand Paul had to fight off the accusations of plagiarized material in several speeches and one of his books while he was battling for the 2016 Republic Presidential nomination.
21. Plagiarism no longer carries a stigma in the academic world. Less social disapproval combined with increased competition for admissions in colleges and universities and survival in the courses have made students more willing to do anything it takes to get “A”.
22. Though plagiarism is a violation of academic code of conduct, it is not illegal. Still you must refrain from the act as it can possibly lead you to civil litigation and substantial penalties.
23. Copyright act was altered to further define plagiarism. In 1989, certain alterations were made to the legal requirement for copyright infringement. It stated that original works no longer needed to bear the © symbol to have copyright protection.
Hence, the use of already published work, whether online or in print, amounts to plagiarism if it is used without permission and citations.
24. Lack of motivation leads to plagiarism. It is noticed that when intrinsic motivation drops in students and/or extrinsic motivation rises, students tend to cheat. (Researched by Middlebury College psychology professor Augustus Jordan)
25. Noble initiatives being taken to keep plagiarism at bay. University of California, San Diego, has taken a noble step to avoid plagiarism in academic writing by encouraging all freshmen to complete an online tutorial on academic integrity before they register for second-semester classes. Professors are also asked to explain the importance of academic integrity in their syllabi and to conduct a discussion in class during the first week to explain the behaviors of students that constitute cheating in their courses. Saying no to plagiarism can be tough when you have the pressure of obtaining good grades and are perplexed about the deadline. But there are preventative actions that you can practice while writing. When you are not expecting plagiarism, that’s when it strikes most. So you have to be prepared.
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