Plagiarism

Plagiarism

            Plagiarism is derived from two Latin words, ‘Plagiarius” means abductor or kidnapper and “Plagiare” means steal. Plagiarism is stealing another person’s language and thoughts and passing it off as one’s own original work. “The Use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work is called plagiarism”- Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary (1955).

            Using someone else’s ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas and phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through carelessness is called plagiarism. Ideas or phrasing includes written or spoken material - from whole papers and paragraph to sentences. It also includes statistics, lab result or art work etc. Someone else can mean a professional source – like published writer or a critic in a book, magazine, encyclopaedia, journal or electronic media like web, another student or anywhere else.

            Plagiarism is an offence. When plagiarism is done by students, researchers, Professors or academia it is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud and may result in censure or even expulsion in extreme cases.

Why do people Plagiarize?

1. Unknowingly, because they do not know what may be the consequences of it.
2. Willingly, because they are simply ignorant or lazy.

How can you avoid Plagiarism?

1. Read and acquire as much knowledge as possible on the topic you are going to write on. This will help understand the key concepts and the previous researches that were done in the field.
2. Document each and every source you have referred to properly and adequately, this will help you in source citation.
3. Manage your time properly so that you get adequate time to research and then write your paper or work.
4. Ask someone whenever in doubt, as it is always better to be clear about the documentation and research work.
5. Make use of quotation marks while citing someone else’s text, word by word. This is a clear indication that the words are not your own.
6. Trust your abilities and make sure what you are doing is right and moral.

Types of Plagiarism

Classifying Plagiarism into different types is difficult because many criteria could be used. some classifications are based on the citation of the source.In some cases you do not cite the source and some times you cite the source but inadequately. 

Another method of classifying plagiarism is as under:

1. Copy and paste plagiarism or full plagiarism
2. Word switch plagiarism. If you take a sentence from a source and change around a few words in it, it is still plagiarism.
3. Style plagiarism. When you follow a source article sentence by sentence or paragraph by paragraph even though none of your sentence is exactly like those in the source article or even the same order.
4. Metaphor plagiarism. Occurs when you are unable to come up with your own illustration to make an important idea clearer and you use the metaphor in the source article without attributing.
5. Idea plagiarism. Occurs when you copy down a creative idea or suggest a solution to a problem from a source article without attributing.

Self plagiarism

Self plagiarism is the reuse of significant, identical or nearly identical portions of one’s own work without citing the original work. This is otherwise called recycling fraud.

Here the author sends his same work or paper to different publication at different times. Sometimes it may have been published earlier and copyrighted. The researcher rephrases it and republishes it to show that he has a large number of publications to his credit.

Though this is an ethical issue it may have serious legal consequences if the copyrights to the article or work have been transferred to another person.