Plagiarism: Robbery in The Field of Intellectual Property
PARA 4002 - Intellectual Property
University of Cincinnati
Since the Internet has become an important source of information and stores a substantial
number of academic documents plagiarism has become a common problem, especially among
students. Considering its diverse implications, including ethical issues, it should be tried to be
detected and reduced. This paper addresses how it can be defined and classified. it also presents
the diverse forms in which it can be committed, as well as some procedures to its detection.
Furthermore, this article exposures some reasons that may explain its occurrence among
students. In sum, this essay about plagiarism shows that it is an importantly extended problem
with huge relevance that should be avoided mainly by teaching students and other academics
about what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Plagiarism is an academic problem worldwide that involves the violation of intellectual
property and which has important ethical implications. Considering the Internet has become a
huge repository of information and resources which is easily accessible in developed countries,
plagiarism is becoming more common, being usually visible among university students. It has
been evidenced that plagiarism occurs at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and
affects public and private higher institutions of education, large and small. This essay tries to
investigate why and how plagiarism can occur, presenting also some explanatory propositions.
Besides, its ethical and academic implications will also be discussed.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as the "the practice of taking someone
else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own." This term comes from the Latin word
plagiarius, which literally means 'kidnapper'. It consists on the attribution of others' ideas and
propositions to oneself, which would be corresponded with their theft or kidnapping. Although
the use of the Internet has facilitated plagiarism to become more widespread, it is not a new
issue. The university is one of the contexts in which plagiarism is more prevalent, especially
considering the extended use of the web by students, faculty and researchers alike. Different
studies have obtained diverse results with regard to its incidence, as they differ in their focus
(some investigations examine cheating in general whereas others are centred in plagiarism and
methodology (different conceptualizations and measures have been considered). As a
consequence, a conclusive and general estimation cannot be presented. As it has been just
mentioned, plagiarism can be conceptualized under different propositions, so different
classifications can be considered. One of the simpler ones is a division in two types: intentional
and unintentional (Park, 2003). Considering this separation, different causes can be attributable
to plagiarism, bearing in mind that determining or proving the intent behind the action is quite
tough. When plagiarism occurs with intent, there is a premeditated and designed decision to
present other authors ideas as our own, thus committing a deliberate act of literary theft (Park,
2003). However, in some cases the individual does not commit plagiarism with this intention.
In these cases, the lack of acknowledgement regarding the use and management of citations is
what leads to plagiarism. Having difficulties in differentiating between common knowledge
and information that should be referenced or a lack of information about the protocol for
referring materials may result in plagiarism.
This later proposition has been evidenced by diverse studies, like the one conducted by Roig
(1997), who suggested that plagiarism may be a matter of ignorance or poor skills, rather than
a purposeful behavior. This author aimed to assess the degree of understating of plagiarism that
colleague students have. For this purpose, he carried out two studies in which undergraduates
were presented with an original paragraph and different rewritten versions of it. Some of these
versions were plagiarized (e.g. superficially modified), whereas other were properly
paraphrased. Students were tested for their ability to distinguish the plagiarized versions from
the ones correctly paraphrased. The percentage of students that correctly identified the
paraphrased versions was around 74%. However, some of the plagiarized versions were not
identified by almost half of the participants. These results were explained by considering that
students did not know exactly what constitutes plagiarism and how they can correctly
paraphrase a given text or sentenco. Regarding the aforementioned differentiation between
intentional and unintentional plagiarism, cultural differences should be considered. Nowadays,
so many undergraduate students, especially those studying abroad, are receiving their studies
in a language different from their mother tongue, generally in English. This situation makes
writing formal papers or essays harder for them. They usually do not feel confident about their
ability to express their ideas in English (or other languages) or they are not familiar with
paraphrasing or referencing. Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some
authors have suggested students plagiarise in four main ways:
Despite the different conceptualizations that can be done, some authors have suggested students
plagiarise in four main ways: • Presenting information from another source as their own. •
Submitting a paper written by someone else and presenting it as their own. • Coping
information literally from a text and referencing it, but without including quotation marks (as
a consequence, this information will seem paraphrased instead of directly quoted). •
Paraphrasing material from other texts without referencing its source.
Causes
Considering that plagiarism is a common issue among scholars and it may have significant
consequences, a question arises in mind: why do individuals commit plagiarism? This topic
has been studied mainly in students. From their perspective, they have usually alleged reasons
like increased competitiveness and pressure to get good marks, lack of time to complete the
tasks, but also other motives as laziness or the easiness to acquire information through the
Internet (Perk, 2003). Other authors, as Núñez (2005), have identified other reasons, such as a
lack of research and citation skills, lack of understanding about what plagiarism and copyright
are, or pressure by other students that also commit plagiarism. Leaving the students' opinion
aside, one possible cause for plagiarism is the methodology used by professors or lecturers, as
well as the type of assignments they ask for. Regarding the question about why people commit
plagiarism, we could think about a "student profile" who is likely to commit it. Research has
shown that some factors can be related to the incidence of plagiarism, such as procrastination,
anxiety concerning marks, morality or discipline of study. Other determinants that may also be
involved are age and maturity, gender, academic ability, peer disapproval or risk of being
caught. However, several studies have shown that the profile of a typical student who
plagiarizes is difficult to define.
Detection
Once the notion of plagiarism has been defined and described, as well as the potential
explanatory causes for it, we should focus on how it can be detected. Regarding manual
plagiarism, different procedures are followed depending on the number of texts that have been
plagiarised. When it occurs within a single text, its detection is mainly based in the recognition
of inconsistences, such as the author's writing style (Clough, 2003). When it happens with
multiple texts, what basically occurs is that some similarities between various sources -that
may be difficult to explain by mere coincidence- are found. Once this situation is noticed, the
goal is to look for the sources from which the information has been obtained. The effectiveness
of this kind of procedures relies on the knowledge, ability and effort of the reviewer for
detecting such inconsistencies, as well as on his or her knowledge about the content of the
article or essay which is being reviewed. For this reason, technological advancements of recent
decades have importantly contributed to this purpose. Universities in the USA, the UK or
Canada have developed software and diverse technological tools for plagiarism detection. They
operate by comparing the papers' content with a stored database of literature or with content
from the Internet. Although the use of these tools is easy, quick and rather widespread among
universities as well as other institutions, some problems have been identified. First of all, they
require from huge space for storage. Second, they can be bypassed by students once they
become aware of their action and how they work. Third, the increasing number of data sources
in the Internet make their use and applicability much more complicated.
Ethical and academical importance
Despite all the technical considerations reviewed, ethical and academical implications should
also be discussed. As the information reported suggests, the creative and original status of the
authors are important, needing to be recognized for a wide variety of reasons, including social,
intellectual, economic and moral. Broadly speaking, from an ethical point of view, plagiarism
is a subcategory of a major category named as "academic dishonesty" (Howard, 2000), being
an inadaptable behavior. It entails the appropriation of other individuals work, which in the end
would be comparable to committing a theft. The original authors have employed time,
resources and effort in developing and constructing their ideas and results, so presenting their
conclusions or propositions as our own is an important ethical violation. In other words, it
would represent an academic fraud. In addition, committing plagiarism damages the
professional qualification of the person who is doing it and decreases his or her
COITTOOLLICU. At the same time, it is interesting to point out that some authors consider
that plagiarism is not an issue. Such authors believe our society is naturally collective, so they
tend to think that no one can make anything without nurturing from prior work from other
people. In this way, every time an author is presenting a new work, he or she is ineludibly
relying on prior ideas of other authors or even other civilizations. In extent, they claim that
notions as originality, ownership or intellectual property belong only to the system of capitalist
individualism.
Conclusion
This essay about plagiarism has discussed what it is, when it occurs and why it is important.
Scientific knowledge is growing exponentially nowadays, becoming more and more
widespread. The accessibility to papers and articles is increasing too. For these reasons, the
importance of the topic reviewed is high, especially among students. Therefore, it is necessary
to think about how it can be reduced or tackled, rather than focusing on how to punish it. If
plagiarism is reduced, punishments will not be necessary. The main way of assuring this
illegality is not committed is through specific acknowledgement. students should know how to
make an appropriate use of this information, handling it with the respect and integrity that
authors deserve. They should be provided with information about the concept of plagiarism,
how it can be committed and why it is relevant. All of these will minimize the occurrence of
intentional and unintentional plagiarism.
