Introduction
After studying for three years in the University, Nanette could not have been more tired of professors after professors telling her class that plagiarism is a major offense and accounts for suspension. But she never really took them seriously; after all, these professors have better things to do than sit around the library and check the internet for each and every source in her papers to see if she has not copied something, or run each of her students’ papers in the plagiarism detection program. That was what she thought. Now, she’s unable to graduate on time because she was suspended for getting caught plagiarizing, no less in her thesis paper. Why did Nanette still did something she had an inkling that was wrong? The above ‘anecdote’ is obviously a made-up story, but not a really unusual situation in today’s generation of students.
Own Explanation of Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the act of not giving somebody his due credit for the work he or she had done when you used it for your own purposes. This seems to specifically apply to written materials and papers. Essentially, it’s the common error students, professionals or just anybody of copying something he or she had researched on for an assignment or project, without even attempting to diversify the words used or paraphrasing the text. That seems like no big deal, but not when one thinks of the implications. That kind of habit means that the person had not really internalized and understood the paper he or she read and articulated it with his own ideas to come up with something uniquely his or hers. Oh, maybe it could be argued that being unique is not that all important for the person, he or she just wants to finish a work on time and without giving that much effort to it. However, the whole story does not revolve around the plagiarizer, does it? Plagiarism hurts the original author more, because it would feel like somebody had robbed him or her. In any case, the author had poured his brains and heart out on that article or resource material, just copying it without even saying it’s from this scholar is really doing injustice to him or her. Plagiarism does not cover only copy-pasting. It also includes the mistake of not putting references at the end of one’s paper, because of course that would look like you have obliterated every single person’s work that you have used to come up with a coherent piece of work, or quoting somebody’s work (which is quite allowed), or even paraphrasing, without properly citing where the quote came from. Basically, it covers the idea that you are using a person’s work and passing it off as your own. Students are the ones most tempted or most liable to commit this major offense. They think that having found the perfect paper to support their assigned works is so good that they really cannot fully explain it using their own words, or they fear they won’t quite express what it is the authors are saying. That is of course, your best case scenario. More often than not, this just reflects the laziness syndrome of today’s generation and lack of discipline, thinking they could get away with copy pasting somebody else’s work. And doing with is so easy, what with the spread of electronic-format materials, copy-pasting are just clicks away.
Favored Academic Text Found
I found a great deal of academic text on Plagiarism. The one I would like to discuss here is this academic journal referenced in Harvard Style as Enders, Walter and Hoover, Gary A. 2004, ‘Whose Line Is It? Plagiarism in Economic’, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 487-493. I find it appealing because, for one thing, in the said journal, the committers of the said misconduct are not the usual students, but the academic scholars themselves, wherein a scholar was found to be guilty of plagiarism in the journal he was about to submit in an article portal. Ironically, the officials were not quite sure how to punish the person because they do not want to be the cause of this guy’s unemployment. I think that was really an insight on how sometimes, imposing grave punishments for certain misdemeanor is ineffective, because it would become hard to exact. Even if it is a student who did it, it would be somewhat hard to expel the student. Wouldn’t it? The paper did a survey actually to determine what the editors would do when confronted with a plagiarizer. Interestingly, the editors do want to see the perpetrator punished, but they also have reservations on imposing harsh penalties. The paper also tackled the issue of the difficulty in detecting plagiarized work, especially if scholars would be the ones doing it. Mainly, the paper gave an insight on how editors avoid such situations. The paper concluded that most of them rely on just copyright law and that they would rather not expose someone who committed plagiarism, and just clear the situation among themselves. Obviously, that would just be too embarrassing!
The Rationalization of Referencing Properly
The most important thing one has to do to not commit plagiarism is to cite his sources properly, after paraphrasing the ideas of the scholar. Interestingly, citing a source strengthens one’s writing; since it gives the idea that the researcher had internalized the paper and combined his own thoughts with the said author’s. He is giving the image that he is unafraid of naming the source because he only agreed with the author’s idea but he is uniquely selling a point entirely his. Also, by citing, the writer is telling his readers that there are others who support his position and he is not alone on such assumptions and theories. After all, a paper that reflects supported ideas is more inclined to be more credible. Then, of course, referencing is showing respect to those who gave all their efforts to give off ideas and arguments. Most importantly, we do not want to reap us of our ideas, do we? So we should not do it to others. (Harris, 2004) Beyond this, maybe it should be noted that this endemic cheating should not be condoned, like what most people do (Chrisholm, 1992), after all, getting where you want to be is only half of the journey, how you get there is more important.
Bibliography
- Chisholm, Donald (1992), ‘An Epidemic of Cheating?’, PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp.264-272.
- Enders, Walter and Hoover, Gary A. 2004, ‘Whose Line Is It? Plagiarism in Economic’, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 487-493
- Harris, Robert 2004, ‘Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers’, Virtual Salt, [Online] Web.