Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism: Best Practices for Original and Ethical Writing

Plagiarism   

 Using others’ words, ideas, artwork, or diagrams and claiming them to be your own is called plagiarism.  It is intellectual dishonesty of the highest rank and should be avoided at any cost. The American Webster's  3rd Int'l defines it as, “To commit literary theft: to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source” ("Definition of PLAGIARIZE," n.d.).   

Introduction

  Avoiding plagiarism does not mean that you have to create everything on your own from scratch. Read books, get help from articles, and peruse newspapers to build up your background knowledge about a topic.  The only thing to remember is to credit the original author when you quote their ideas or material in your write-up.   Observing the principles of originality and integrity results in the sharing of knowledge and the legacy of ideas is transferred to the next generation. Also, when due credit is given to the authors, they feel acknowledged and are motivated to work with more enthusiasm.   

Repercussions of Plagiarism   

• For students 

 As a student, you may commit plagiarism accidentally and deliberately. If you are taking notes during a lecture, you may end up copying the exact words of the speaker. But often, students commit plagiarism deliberately to save time and effort. Rather than exploring relevant sources, reading them thoroughly, and citing them in their work, they copy content from webpages, e-books, and Wikipedia.   As teachers, we understand that the magic of ‘CTRL+C and CTRL+V’ is too tempting to avoid; but remember, that it results in humiliation, poor grades, and spending more time on rewriting the assignment.  

• For professionals

   If you are a professional and you copy other’s ideas to compose your work, you may be given a letter of concern, or in certain circumstances, may even be expelled from your job. In case, you have violated copyright laws, the author may sue you.   

How to avoid it?  

 Cultivate the habit of reading up on a topic in detail, thinking critically about it, and forming your interpretation. To make your viewpoint credible, quote from critics’ articles. Identify and mention the  origin in cases such as

•  Idea, opinion, and theory of another person  
•  Graphs, drawings, facts, and statistics  
•  Quotations of another person’s spoken or written words  
•  Paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words

Quotations  

If you want to borrow other’s words as it is, use the following two ways:  

• Short quote 

 If the quote is comprised of forty or less than forty words, it is written within quotation marks and is incorporated within the text.  The quotation ends with the author's last name, year of publication, and page number in parenthesis.   

Example:  “Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others… that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort”(Said, 2003, p. xvi). 

• Block quote  

 If the quote is comprised of more than 40 words, give it in the form of a block. Start it in a new line by pressing ‘enter’, indent it ½ inch from the margin, and keep double line spacing. The parenthetical citation should come after the closing punctuation mark.  

Example:  Class consciousness leads to subjectivity,  Marx is not working to create an undivided subject where desire and interest coincide. Class consciousness does not operate toward that goal. Both in the economic area (capitalist) and the political (world-historical agent), Marx is obliged to construct models of a divided and dislocated subject whose parts are not continuous or coherent with each other. (Spivak, 1992, p. 71)

Rules of Citations 

• You don’t need to cite common knowledge and universal truths. You can mention them in your own words without any reference. 

          Examples:  

1.  Objects, that have mass, fall towards the ground due to gravity.  
2.  WWI began in 1914.

• You need to document facts that are generally not known. The specific facts appear more credible and correct when you give references.   

         Example: 

1.  Einstein’s second postulate, the light postulate, asserts that “light is always propagated in space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body” (1946, p. 117).  

•  Text deleted for shortening should be indicated with ellipsis (…) with proper citation. 

             Example: 

1. The research concluded the reaction provided “clear evidence that… the fundamental chemistry of the process was being interrupted,” although at what point the interruption occurs remains to be demonstrated” (Tinker/Walsh, 3776).

• Cite together the quotes taken from different parts of a single paragraph.  

           Example:  

1. Ellis observed that “the decay of the family has long been a favorite theme of social alarmists” but that in a sense they are “completely justified” (2005, p.21).  

• If you want to add your comment for explaining a point, or identifying a referent or abbreviation, you give it using square brackets.

                Example:  

1. The CEO finally decided “not to file a challenge to the court’s acceptance of amicus briefs [comments on legal points filed by parties not involved in the lawsuit]” to counter an assertion that feared its case was built on inappropriate precedents (Smith, 2006, p.23).  

Paraphrasing

  Presenting someone else’s ideas by putting them in your own words is called paraphrasing. A correct  paraphrase needs to be  

1.    A condensed version of another author’s work,  
2.    An original articulation of another author’s ideas,
3.    Structured differently from the original, and 
4.    Cited properly. 

•  Tips for Paraphrasing  

Follow these tips to paraphrase content: 

1.    Read carefully until you understand the content 
2.    Cover the content which you have just read  
3.    Do the exercise of writing what you have read (the idea) in your own words  
4.    Compare with the source to remove similar expressions
5.    Make a note identifying the source  

• Inappropriate Paraphrasing

  If you are making slight changes in the original wording and passing it off as your own, it will be inappropriate paraphrasing. You need to change the order of words and use different sentence structures and your own words to effectively paraphrase other’s ideas.  Putting others’ ideas in your own words does not mean that you ignore the acknowledgment of the source. Cite the source to give proper credit to the original author. The example given below shows appropriate paraphrasing.    

Example:  The colonizers constructed knowledge in almost all fields ranging from geography, sociology,  psychology, and ethnology to literary criticism, in terms of power relationships and so they shaped the vision of the public around the world and made them view all phenomenon in a specifically determined way to serve their imperialist interests (Loomba, 2000, p. 43-45).  

Plagiarism and IT

  The practice of copying material from web pages has become common as information is readily accessible there. However, in the case of online plagiarism, it has also become possible to locate the source that you have exploited. Therefore, online sources (text, graphics) must be cited just as the documentation of printed sources.   

•   Use of Spinner 

 There are numerous software and websites available that replace the words of the original content with their synonyms. The resultant product is only a mindless jumble of words. It lacks in cohesion and coherence and the use of Word Spinner can be identified at once. You, as a student, are advised not to rely on any such source as it results in embarrassment and a waste of time. Even if, with time, powerful spinners do emerge, it is best to avoid them! 

Plagiarism and Copyright

  When a source that has copyrights is copied, it becomes a legal issue. Copyright is a legally stated list of rights belonging to the author of a work. In the case of copyright, you are required to seek written permission from the owner of a work as you cannot cite the material without this prior permission. If permission is not granted, the may possibly be used and cited within the domain of an institution as long as it is used for academic purposes only. The content may not be disseminated beyond campus (including webpage) which would once again be a copyright violation.   

Other Practices Which Constitute Plagiarism

Borrowing organization: Using the general plan, the main headings, or a rewritten form of someone else’s material 

Submitting someone else’s material as one’s own: The practice of employing or allowing another person to alter or revise the work that someone submits as his/her own. This includes buying or copying an entire paper or article from the Web.  

Failing to reference/footnote material: Lifting selected passages and phrases without proper acknowledgment and thereby passing off somebody else’s ideas or words as one’s own

Collusion: Presenting work done collaboratively as one’s own without giving the names of all the participants. While working in collaboration with other students, it must be clarified by the professor whether after a group discussion, an individual written assignment must be turned in or whether a collective work can be submitted. 

False Citation: Documenting outside sources that were not consulted 

Multiple submissions of academic work: Revising or using all or part of an earlier piece of work or producing a single piece of work to satisfy two requirements 

Characteristics of a Free-From-Plagiarism Document

1.    It has an accurate presentation of ideas from the original message.  
2.   Quotation marks have been used to indicate the parts taken directly from the source. 
3.   The sources are cited properly. 

References 

1. Definition of PLAGIARIZE. (n.d.). In Dictionary by Merriam-Webster. Retrieved from https://www.merriam webster.com/dictionary/plagiarize 
2.  Loomba, A. (2000). Colonilism/Postcolonialism. London: Routledge. 
3.  Said, E. W. (2003). Preface. In Orientalism (p. xvi). London: Penguin.