SGPsychStud: Plagiarism and its effects

This has been quite a hot topic for the last few years, as there has been an explosion of information via the internet.  With information being rampant these days, there is a high chance that what you have just typed is something you seen or heard before.  So if this is the case, you may need to check if your work consist of any plagiarism.

For those who do not know about what plagiarism, Plagiarism.org gives quite a comprehensive and all rounded answer towards what is plagiarism.  Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) defines plagiarism as "uncredited use (both intentional and unintentional) of somebody else's words or ideas", which I feel is quite an appropriate and easily understood definition of plagiarism.
The APA manual states plagiarism as "the practice of claiming credit for the words, ideas, and concepts of others" (APA, 2009, p. 170).

Plagiarism is a big issue in the academic world, with more and more found of plagiarism every year.  This is not only in psychology and even in other fields such as politics, journalism, arts, music, etc.  iThenticate's Plagiarism blog has a post on the top 5 plagiarism scandals of 2012, which involved journalism, law, and politics.  Losing your job is one thing, and having a black mark on your career is another.

So it is never worth it to just "copy and paste", and if you really have to, make sure you do your citations properly. Purdue University's OWL has some tips and best practices for students to prevent plagiarism.  If you are still unsure on whether your work has some plagiarism in it, I would advice you to run it through some plagiarism checkers before submitting your work. You should be able to find some free plagiarism checkers online.  A lot of schools and institutions use Turnitin, which is one major plagiarism checker used to check students' work.

If you are wondering why I even started on this topic, it was because I found that a certain website plagiarised information from one of my posts without my consent.  Hence I wrote to the author and asked him/her to remove it promptly.  It was settled very quickly with no further issues.

If someone were to ask you to explain "plagiarism" in a layman's term, this is how I would explain it:
Your works and ideas belong to you.  If you were to borrow someone else's things, the least you can do is to be honest and say it don't belong to you and "Thank you" to the original author.  The same should apply when someone borrows something from you.  If someone takes something of yours and say that it is his/hers, how would you feel?  So, let us not do it to others as well.     
You may use the above phrase, but please do not plagiarise and cite or quote it.. Thanks!

Comments

  1. Thanks for this post.
    I reccomend using a website called Copyleaks - www.copyleaks.com to detect online plagiarism.

    Thanks,
    Ron

    ReplyDelete

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