Understanding Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Do you plagiarize? Many high school students are unsure if they are plagiarizing school work or not; unfortunately "not knowing" does not provide protection or immunity from a poor grade or even the law. For example if a driver is pulled over for speeding, telling the officer "I didn't know / I didn't see the signs / no one got hurt" does not change the law or the situation.
Plagiarism is an illegal form of copying; people often believe plagiarism only pertains to copying directly from a book or an online article, but it can be any sort of copying where no permission was granted and no credit was given (images, music or sounds, fiction stories, blog entries, email, social media posts, etc).
Students that do not fully understand the pitfalls of plagiarism often veer down one of these paths:
- Believing that "re-writing what has already been written" is a waste of time. After finding great resources the student will comment "this author says everything I want to say / my teacher wants me to say. Why can't I just turn this in as my paper?"
- Believing that changing words around / adding extra words / using a Thesaurus to change words is enough of an alteration to the original source to "make it their own work" and is an acceptable form of research and writing.
- Believing that information is just plain free to use because "it's for school work" or it's their personal opinion and that should be enough of a reason. "I would let anyone use my paper as their own, so they should let me. That is how it is these days. Giving credit / providing citations is old fashioned."
- Believing that "no one will know" they copied and/or "there is no way to find out." There are a few variations on this general thought process, however these students seem firm in their belief that if "no one knows or finds out" they are not incorrect or doing anything wrong.
These types of responses to research are academically and ethically incorrect, however, they are good starting points for teachers, librarians and students in the beginning research process.