Education and Science Research

Plagiarism is defined as the use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author. This is according to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary. Acknowledging your sources is very important and easy to do, and should always be done when borrowing, summarizing or quoting other people’s written materials.

Article writing comes easy to some people and not so easy to others. They may be tempted to copy from someone else and hope that no one finds out. Unfortunately or fortunately, with today’s programs for checking originality, it is hard to do that.

Always use citations and documentation when quoting from another source. Find a legitimate source to help you find the tools to do this in the right way. There are consequences if you are caught. You may lose your job or credence.

Inaccurate acknowledgement is not plagiarism. There are sources on the internet that are reliable that will help you figure out the proper way to acknowledge the use of someone else’s work.

For those who use validation software, please keep in mind that it is not foolproof. Just as in any other testing, there is room for false positives. It is important for the person checking the article to recognize that a phrase may show up in the validating software but it is not necessarily a stolen idea.

Be fair to the writer and do not accuse them until you are positive that they are guilty of plagiarism. It is not to be taken lightly on either side but ruining someone’s reputation with false accusations can be debilitating. In fact, it’s illegal. So, protect yourself and cite your sources to avoid plagiarism.

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Having been involved in the education of students in one way or another for over three-quarters of my life now on one side or the other as both student and teacher, it still never ceases to amaze me how students still fail to heed the warnings about plagiarism that are given by their institution and its staff the further that they go in their education. This is because, clearly, the further you go in your studies the more will be expected of you with regards to your use of other people’s material and its effective referencing. Therefore, as you progress from high school to college and then on to university – you cannot expect to pass other people’s material off as your own with the availability of resources like the somewhat controversial (in view of copyright issues) Viper and Turnitin software to check your work against for possible instances of plagiarism.

On this basis, it is clear that plagiarism is ostensibly concerned with the issue of false attribution of another person’s work as your own, but you also need to appreciate plagiarism is somewhat different from instances of copyright infringement because it is concerned with unearned increments to the original author’s reputation for instances of plagiarism. As a result, plagiarism by students and teachers alike is looked upon as being tantamount to ‘Academic Dishonesty’ so offenders are then made subject to academic censure and may be removed from the institution that they are working at a student or an employee for bringing its reputation into disrepute for plagiarism. At the same time, however you should also appreciate many of the subjects students you may opt of study have a practical basis because they lead onto specific careers so that plagirarism is frowned upon. With this in mind, you need to recognise that plagiarism will also have an impact on your practical subject area so, for example, in journalism, plagiarism is considered a breach of ethics so those who undertake instance of plagiarism are typically left to face disciplinary measures.

With this in mind, whilst some individuals may claim that they have plagiarised unintentionally by failing to include quotations (including the speech marks – “” – to clearly delineate them) or supply appropriate references in the correct style (e.g. Harvard, Footnotes, Oxford etc…), this goes some way to explaining why educational institutions have regulations and protocols to prevent plagiarism. On this basis, it should be becoming clear to you by now that plagiarism is a serious offence that can lead to all manner of punishments being inflicted on any student who fails to reference their work properly and such punishment includes -

(i) A failing grade to any student who plagiarises on a single assignment (at high school) and/or a fail for the course (at college or university).

(ii) Moreover, where a student has committed a severe type of plagiarism (for example, including copying an entire article and submitting it as their own work), they may be suspended or expelled.

However, that is not to say your institute may not be part of the problem. This is because there is often a great deal of repetition in projects or paper topics, whilst the accessibility of new technology makes it very easy for students to plagiarise by copying and pasting or adding in information and using another source without effectively referencing the materials’ origin.

However, in case you do not feel sufficiently forewarned, you need to recognise plagiarism is often easily detected because – (a) students’ choices of sources are frequently unoriginal so your teachers may receive the same passage copied from many students; (b) it is often easy to tell whether or not students are using words of their own; (c) students may choose sources inappropriately, or that are even just wrong; and (d) many universities now use anti-plagiarism detection software.

Therefore, you need to look to take steps to protect yourself and, with this in mind, I would recommend that you look to take the following steps to help yourself -

(i) Plan your research.
(ii) Take notes on the results that you find.
(iii) Plan your work – think about the structure and the order of your paragraphs.
(iv) Use quotations and make sure that you discuss what you quote to put it into context.
(v) Think analytically and evaluatively regarding the materials that you find.
(vi) Adapt your knowledge to achieve your results to writing your work.
(vii) Use the appropriate system of referencing that your institution or assessor requires.

There is much more that we could discuss in this and other areas, but I would advise you to have a look around for further resources and materials to assist you with gaining really viable essay feedback for your work.

There are many ways to avoid plagiarism, the easiest way of all is to simply cite your sources and let your readers know that some of the information you used is not your own. But there are also other, more advanced ways to avoid it, a plagiarism checking software will check for it in any document with extreme accuracy. It shows the percentage of similarity between the document submitted with any other published document. This software helps you see how much of you work actually belongs to someone else and gives you the opportunity to avoid plagiarism by giving you a chance to change it and make it completely your own. It helps check for it so that we don’t make the mistake of accidentally including others work without properly citing the source. This checking software is also being used with more frequency by teachers and college professors to help them avoid plagiarism that may be done intentionally. Now teachers will not be fooled by some students who want to get away with literary theft.

Stopping Plagiarism thanks to softwares

We have come to a time in our technological advanced society where we can appropriate any information thanks to the internet and computers, we can simply copy and paste something, put our name on it and it can be perceived as ours. Thanks to this checking software, that can check for plagiarism into every word of the document we can avoid it to the last word. Some of the hard work, and years of research we do will be rightfully accredited. By creating this checking software we can try to get one step closer to avoid plagiarism and return to a creative -society where everyone can contribute their own wonderful ideas and thoughts making this place a better place to live.

There are several sites that have a plagiarism checking software, some are free but usually the ones that work best and deliver well analyzed results have a small fee, Wherever you find a site that will check for it, you will find people dedicated to help reduce the negative impact in our society and you will find professionals working hard to avoid plagiarism in education. The youth of the world is heading towards a lack of creativity because there is no need to express your own thoughts in writing anymore; it is easier and faster to copy from someone else. We must find a way to change this and hopefully this plagiarism checking software will get the job started and let cheaters know that is not that easy anymore.

It seems that people are constantly saying how terrible plagiarism is when it comes to an academic environment. Institutions are constantly warning their students about the harsh penalties that one can incur by plagiarizing someone’s work. But is is it really that bad? Well, it very much depends on the society that you live in.

The main reason that we think it is so bad is because of the concept of private property. Property laws were never enforce with such strictness prior to the existence of the United States. Once these concepts that were long considered by philosophers such as Locke were actually implemented in a country, laws protecting written works soon became part of this concept of private property.

Even today there are societies out there that will argue that taking someone’s work and making it better should not be considered stealing. Communism had often enforced these concepts and Communist leaders very much supported the idea that works should be shared rather than copyrighted. In addition, by making something better they argued that you were improving the benefit to all of society. Were they right?

Well, if you live in the “Westernized” world you will be harshly criticized for taking this view if you try it in the academic world. However, you still have the internet. Is it okay to copy someone’s work on the internet? Again, the Westernized world the answer is still a resounding “no.”

There are even court cases out there that prove that you can be criminally prosecuted by direct copying on the internet for profit. So if if you completely disagree with the concept of intellectual property, for the sake of staying out of jail you should certainly think twice before plagiarizing. Oh, and if you are an EzineArticles author such as myself, be prepared to get banned as it is a breach of the terms of service.

It is an era of growing knowledge. There are many individuals who write research papers and articles of international standard, which have to be totally unique, in order to be their own piece of work to earn credit and recognition. With the technological advancement in the computer sector, new software’s have been introduced in order to detect plagiarism which has many advantages for essay and article writers.

Plagiarism is a criminal act if the writer has copy rights reserved with him. In order to avoid this one should always use plagiarism detecting software’s to make sure that your piece of writing is unique.

Plagiarism software’s are not only able to detect plagiarism, but they also provide you a link from where that particular writing piece originated from. It saves you from copying other people’s work which can risk your credibility and denial of your work which might have taken a long time to compile. Although it can be true that your research consumed a lot of your precious time and it was rejected because it was plagiarised.

Another advantage is that such software makes writers use their capabilities and capacity to the fullest. People who hire writers want to obtain unique and novel piece of writings for their magazines and newspapers. Such software helps the companies in publishing original articles in order to avoid law suits and other related problems.

Besides, plagiarism software also gives you particular details of an essay or any other writing piece available online, such as when was this particular writing piece was submitted and by whom that research was done. One must remember that taking ideas from another person’s work is not considered plagiarism, but copying that exact material is plagiarism, which can bring law suits against you which can be extremely costly, and the fines can be in several thousand dollars and above.

Plagiarism software help the writers in being careful about what they write, as sometimes simple sentences of common sense can be copyrighted and you can be plagiarising unintentionally. No one wants to be dragged into extensive law proceedings for a crime of which he or she was unaware of. Many countries are taking plagiarism seriously and everyday many laws are passed all around the world in order to stop such activities.

In short, plagiarism detectors are of great use to the writers especially those who write on a daily basis and it is not their passion, rather work. Plagiarism is becoming increasingly threatening for the original writers as their work is being copied by other individuals. Many laws against plagiarism have been passed around the world. In order to avoid getting into legal procedures, writers should take advantage of plagiarism software which will enhance their creativity and resourcefulness, as well as help them to save more of their time.