ETHICS AND NUANCES OF PLAGIARISM

“What a good thing Adam had. When he said good thing, he knew nobody said it before”

- Mark Twain

A task accomplished by anyone with honesty always give that individual a sense of happiness

and peace. When someone achieve his goal by any act of treachery or falsehood, he or she may

become beloved to many but he or she starts to lose his or her inner peace from that moment.

This treachery, falsehood and showing of someone else work, as your own work is plagiarism.

The term plagiarism is come from Latin word plagiarius “kidnapper”. In 18th century,

Europeans started to consider it as unethical. Scholars in Europe that time started to realize the

importance copyright. However, plagiarism is not specifically criminal act like violations of

copyright acts. It may be consider as violation of moral right or consider as moral offence.

The thing with plagiarism is that it is not same as copyright infringement. “A

copyright infringement is use of work protected by copy right laws”. In this one use someone

else work without the permission of copyright holder , whereas plagiarism is when you don’t

say where you took it from and show it as your own work. It can be moral offence when

plagiarist is rewarded from the work that he or she showed as his or her work. When an

organization owns the work of particular individual and his or her work is shown by someone

else as his or her own work in that case plagiarism is a criminal act.
Ethics of plagiarism is same as ethics of stealing. It can only be justified as moral in some

situations, for example when someone is dying due to lack of money then stealing to save a life

is moral. But in most of the cases stealing is habitual due to laziness and done to fulfill fancy

desires, which is egregiously bad. In this way most of plagiarism is unethical and some time

illegal. It’s no good to the plagiarist , it will diminishes his or her thinking and creative skills ,also

lowers the confidence level and destroys inner peace.

Once plagiarism is done by accused in school or college and crime is proven, he

or she may face following consequences:

 His or her reputation diminishes.

 Expulsion from university.

 Suspension from school and university.

 Reported as ethical offence.

 Ruin the good opportunities for higher studies.

The other kinds of plagiarism is self plagiarism which is one of the most dangerous

serious ethical issue. Self plagiarism is reuse of one ‘s previous work without citing original work.

The term “recycling fraud” is used for the following kind plagiarist. This leads to many copyright

law related issues, if someone has already given his work’s copyright to other holder and he is

still using that content is also leads to illegal consequences. Some academics journals created

some codes of ethics for self plagiarism for example journal of international business studies.

There are some professional organizations are also involved in this for example association of
computing machinery. Some organization don’t make specific reference regarding self

plagiarism example. APSA (American political science association). People take self plagiarism

lightly due to this it’s much more dangerous, because of people ignorance on the seriousness of

it . it is highly debatable issue which is not given much priority and importance needed.

Plagiarism is unethical and immoral ,only few forms of plagiarisms are beneficial. One must

understand what is consist of plagiarism. One must learn the art of proper citation. One must

experiment with it’s creative skills.

Having effective understanding of plagiarism can be helpful for both plagiarist

and content holder. It can help one to understand what are the pros and cons of it . For this one

should know about types of plagiarism:

 Word to word copy of one’s work or copy from single source without alteration. In this one

copy all the words of original source and present it as his or her own work.it is also

called complete plagiarism. These practice are perform by academically poor students and

illiterates .

 Borrowing work and using it.

 Remixing of words from other phrases. This form of plagiarism needs a wide range of source

and it’s consist of slight change in paragraphs.

 Changing some words and presenting it. It is consist of slightly change in the words of

original source, it can be happen by mistake. Its putting some idea in your words.

 Copied from several different sources. It is consist of copying from different sources which

can lead to this type of plagiarism.

  With proper citation but no original work. It is also very different and difficult type of

plagiarism. It is consist of proper citation and proper quotation . it occurs when someone

misunderstood the assignment given to him.

 With proper citation but relies purely on structure of original. Similar to remixing of words

but attempts to put idea in own words.

There are also different forms of plagiarisms, it can be associated with

academics , journalism and arts. All these three forms are vulnerable to plagiarism and tough to

trace if someone’s work has been stolen. There is rise in extreme form of plagiarism in

academics, which is consist of content mills. These practices are leading to the lack of original

content in coming generation.

Some common forms of student plagiarisms are:

 Submitting someone else work as there own work.

 Rewriting of someone else work.

 Using someone else quotation not citing the source.

 Fail to bring the original thought into text.

 Inaccurately citing someone else work.

 Plagiarism in journalism in this digital world can be lethal weapon. Now days fake

news is very common thing and plagiarism is acting as catalyst in spreading of fake

news. There are many examples of these incident . The temptation of plagiarism is rising

due to availability of internet.

Ways to stop different types of plagiarism:

  One must know what consist of plagiarism.

 Keep track of all the sources used by one.

 Use of plagiarism software to find out plagiarism .

 Use properly recitation and quotations.

Bibliography

Edu Kid Co.

Wikipedia

Webster University