Plagiarism has been defined as “the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else’s written or creative work…without adequate acknowledgement”. This can include stealing the actual wording used by another source, by building on someone else’s ideas in your own work without referencing them properly, or by replacing or changing some wording in a passage (paraphrasing) without giving the original author due credit. Using someone else’s artwork, graphs, photos etc. without referencing the source also falls under Plagiarism.
Plagiarism has a long-standing history in journalism and academia, but the emergence of the Internet has made the physical act of stealing another’s work much easier, simply by copying and pasting. Plagiarism occurs either intentionally, by stealing another’s work or purchasing an essay from an on-line “paper mill”, or unintentionally, through carelessness (not referencing properly).
Regardless of your motivations, if you get caught plagiarising in college, there’s major repercussions. Every college has their own anti-Plagiarism guidelines, and adopt standard referencing systems (i.e. Harvard referencing), so every student should familiarise themselves with these. You may be asked to submit assignments through on-line, anti-Plagiarism detectors, like Turn-it-in, so remember to re-read every assignment thoroughly, checking that every source has been accurately acknowledged. Make sure to keep track of all your sources as you go, especially when researching topics on the internet, as it is very easy to forget where that excellent quote or statistic came from once you finish your assignment!
Here's a useful link for correct referencing techniques
No comments:
Post a Comment