ASSIGNMENT # 1: PLAGIARISM ESSAY

Plagiarism Essay

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Plagiarism Essay

Derived from a Latin word “Plagio,” plagiarism means to borrow, copy, or steal someone’s ideas, thoughts, or works and turning them as your own. It is present in many spheres such as music, science, literature, art, etc. It is a deliberate act of cheating and an obstacle for the society. It makes people lazy and kills the realization and urge to become first and create something new. It is unethical as it is a form of theft. A person steals someone’s intellectual property by taking his ideas or thoughts CITATION And09 \l 1033 (Anderson, 2009).

Plagiarism has different forms. In the academics and education, it is considered as academic fraud or academic dishonesty, and in journalism, it is known as journalistic ethics. Plagiarism is common in the field of education now days as students are fully dependent on internet sources, rather than thinking and working on their own. Plagiarism by students is considered a serious crime in the academic field that may result in severe punishments such as dropping out of the institution, failing grades, expulsion, or suspension. Students rely too much on others’ works that they fail to bring up the original work by themselves. Mostly the University students seem to have faced the issue of plagiarism as they use other's works without citing or acknowledging them either by intention or due to lack of knowledge on the importance of quoting or citing.  When they claim to have created something that in reality, they simply copied from someone else, they are lying. They are misleading those who listen to them into believing that they made something which they didn’t actually make, and they may gain personally from that. For example, being praised, or being judged as competent at something they’re not actually competent at. It doesn’t end there. Out in the “real world”, a person can be sued for misappropriating someone else’s intellectual property. Even if he takes it with the owner’s permission, his failure to disclose this may result in irreparable harm to his reputation and career upon discovery.

There are many reasons for the students to choose copying the material of others. The major reason is pressure of obtaining good grades. In order to maintain their scores, they turn to stealing the work of others and it becomes a habit to turn to plagiarism to complete their tasks. Another reason is the laziness of students. It has been observed that the university students are much lazy in thinking of new ideas and producing quality work. They prefer copying material from internet sources, rather than creating their own work CITATION Amo14 \l 1033 (Amos, MLIS, & AHIP, 2014).

Plagiarism can be avoided in many ways. If an individual requires some idea on a topic, he may search that but should not copy someone else’s work and present it as his own. The person may search the topic, read it, and then write it in his own words. Writing a document in his own words would make him think and add something new to the already existing information. Referencing and quoting are the other ways to prevent plagiarism. The information should be put on the document through proper formatting. If any point is taken from any book or other piece of literature, it should be properly quoted with citation and references should be put at the end of the document CITATION Bre13 \l 1033 (Bretag, 2013).

The widespread use of computers and the advent of the Internet has made it easier to plagiarize the work of others. Technology has developed many tools for checking electronic theft as plagiarized material. Several software for plagiarism detection are developed that check the plagiarism and give the report within a few minutes.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Amos, K. A., MLIS, & AHIP. (2014). The ethics of scholarly publishing: exploring differences in plagiarism and duplicate publication across nations. Journal of Medical Library Association, 102(2), 87-91. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3988779/

Anderson, I. (2009). Avoiding plagiarism in academic writing. Nursing Standard, 23(18), 7-35. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/openview/3157946c9c49444d0f0e1f0cd68c33eb/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=30130

Bretag, T. (2013). Challenges in Addressing Plagiarism in Education. PLOS Medicine, 10(12). doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001574