According to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary «to plagiarize» means to use someone else’s words or scientific ideas and present them as one’s own, without providing proper citation and acknowledgment of the original source. It is strictly forbidden to plagiarize, because the person, who plagiarizes another researcher’s work, commits literary theft ("Plagiarize"). Plagiarism is considered to be a fraudulent act, since it involves stealing someone else’s ideas and lying about it ("What is Plagiarism?").
If the original research was recorded in a book, article or any other source, it becomes an intellectual property of the author, which means it is protected by copyright laws, just like any invention or product. Therefore, using the ideas from the research without acknowledging the author is considered to be an intellectual theft ("What is Plagiarism?").
Plagiarism can be expressed in different forms, such as using someone else’s original work and turning it in as one’s own, copying parts of the paper or paraphrasing its ideas without citing the source, failing to use quotations marks, providing incorrect information about the source of the paper ("What is Plagiarism?") - for example citing the material that wasn’t used in the paper or retrieving ideas from the secondary source, while citing a primary one ("Plagiarism"). Copying the sentence structure, while changing some words in it, without giving credit to the source where it was taken or taking so many ideas and words from the source, that it becomes a majority of the work, even after acknowledging the author is also considered to be plagiarism ("What is Plagiarism?"). Using the help of professional writing agencies, which create papers from scratch for students is strictly prohibited, even if the original author gives his permission to use the work and turn it as one’s own, because it is an act of fraud that violates an Honor Code of the institution, where the paper is submitted. Auto-plagiarism is another form of plagiarism that occurs if a student submits parts or a full paper written by them before, that has already been evaluated in another course or degree, if it is not specifically indicated by the course requirements ("Plagiarism").
Regardless of the fact that the plagiarism was intentional or unintentional, there are always severe consequences for the students, who try to cheat and present someone else’s work as their own without giving full credit. All the academic institutions, colleges and universities consider plagiarism to be a serious matter and thoroughly investigate all the instances and cases of plagiarism in students’ works. Not all the instances of plagiarism happen as conscious intentions to steal someone else’s work and conduct an academic fraud, sometimes a student can submit a plagiarized work because of the lack of knowledge in citing and quoting rules. However, even if the act of plagiarism was reckless, the penalties will occur ("Plagiarism").
There are two forms of academic misconduct, such as minor misconduct and major misconduct, which can involve different consequences. For committing a minor misconduct, such as the first offense, a student may receive a formal warning about plagiarism and the possible consequences of further acts of academic cheating, reduction of the final grade, be required to resubmit the paper or take another assessment that will be equivalent for the specific course. For committing major misconduct students may be required to complete an additional assignment to finish the course, get a failing grade for the assessment that was plagiarized, fail a complete course, receive an academic penalty and withdraw from the course or even get expelled from the institution ("Detection and Consequences of Plagiarism - University of Southern Queensland").
At first, students can be rather confused about the rules of writing a research paper and the citing process, so often such confusion may lead to instances of reckless plagiarism, that is always considered as a serious matter in the academic institutions. The best way to avoid plagiarism for students is to learn how to conduct a research and write a paper afterwards ("What is Plagiarism?"). There are some basic rules, which may be helpful in avoiding plagiarism - first of all, it is important to plan the research paper and create an outline for it to make sure that all the ideas are properly addressed and there are clear boundaries between original ideas and the ones taken from other scientific sources. Second, it will be effective to take notes, while writing a paper - mark all the page numbers in the source, where a student takes the idea or information, and then separate such ideas in the paper from the original ones, for example by using different font colors ("What is Plagiarism?").
It is important to understand that paraphrasing a couple of words from the source is not sufficient, it is necessary to change the sentence structure as well. It would be better to read the whole source, distinguish the main ideas and then present them in the paper, adding new conclusions and letting the sources support the paper’s thesis. Some students believe that it is better to hide the fact, that some of the ideas came from outside sources, but the main point of writing a paper is to support student’s conclusions with works of other researchers ("What is Plagiarism?").
The necessity to acknowledge the author of the work applies not only to the paper work, it also extends to programming code, media - videos, songs, music, graphs or other illustrations («Plagiarism"). All students must learn the principles on how to avoid plagiarism and understand that there are serious consequences of such fraudulent act of academic mischief.
Works Cited
"Detection and Consequences of Plagiarism - University of Southern Queensland." University of Southern Queensland - University of Southern Queensland. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2016.
"Plagiarism." University of Oxford. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2016.
"Plagiarize." Merriam-Webster. n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2016.
"What is Plagiarism?" Plagiarism.org - Best Practices for Ensuring Originality in Written Work. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2016.
