Academic Integrity: Plagiarism
Jay Hoon OH 36146116
By the definition of plagiarism according to University of Oxford, “Plagiarism is the copying or paraphrasing of other people’s work or ideas into your own work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition. Collusion is another form of plagiarism involving the unauthorised collaboration of students (or others) in a piece of work.” If a presentation or submission of another person’s work is submitted without a proper citation as student’s own work in UBC, the investigation occurs and student is given an interview to explain the situation. When plagiarism is found as the description above, zero credit will be given.
In the past, there were no internets and variety of mass Medias to share knowledge throughout the world. People had to read books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and friend’s work to plagiarize other works of people. Many people in that past did not realize if they were using other people’s idea. According to English word information, accidental plagiarism was usually the case. It was the result of poor citation or referencing or of poor preparation or a misunderstanding of plagiarism. For instance, Dinitia Smith reported in The New York Times, “:“Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophomore accused of plagiarizing parts of her recently published chick-lit novel, acknowledged yesterday that she had borrowed language from another writer’s books, but called the copying “unintentional and unconscious.”
In an e-mail message yesterday afternoon, Ms. Viswanathan, 19, said that in high school she had read the two books she is accused of borrowing from, “Sloppy Firsts” and “Second Helpings,” and that they “spoke to me in a way few other books did.”
“Recently, I was very surprised and upset to learn that there are similarities between some passages in my novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, and passages in these books,” she said.
“Calling herself a ‘huge fan’ of Ms. McCafferty’s work, Ms. Viswanathan added, ‘I wasn’t aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty’s words.’ She also apologized to Ms. McCafferty and said that future printings of the novel would be revised to ‘eliminate any inappropriate similarities.’ ”
Similar to this example, many people in the past did not realize if they were plagiarizing other people’s work due to lack of information on plagiarism and unintentional deed.
After the internet became the main source of sharing ideas and knowledge, people can easily access into other people’s work just with one easy search on the web. Even if it became easy to plagiarize due to the easy access of the other people’s work, most of the people are aware of plagiarism today due to the serious regulation. It is true that plagiarism sometimes can be ambiguous in some areas. However, deliberate plagiarism occurs relatively more than accidental plagiarism which “people claim to be”. Often, plagiarism is abused in a way that sometimes it can be ambiguous. Hence, most of the plagiarism occurs in the universities in higher education. For example, when a student of university paraphrased one expression by other author or copies the code, copies a line of a solution in math problem, the chances of getting caught with plagiarism is impossible.
While sharing ideas are benevolent, internet created the easiness of stealing other people’s ideas and knowledge. The plagiarism, whether it was intentional or unintentional, such act should be prohibited with severe penalties and yet the specific regulations and explanations should be given thoroughly.
Reference
UBC Regulation on Plagiarism.” n.pag. Web. 18 Jan 2014. <http://vpacademic.ubc.ca/academic-integrity/ubc-regulation-on-plagiarism/>.
“What is plagiarism?.” n.pag. Web. 18 Jan 2014. <http://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/goodpractice/about/>.
“Plagiarism: Past and Present.” n.pag. Web. 18 Jan 2014. <http://wordinfo.info/unit/3424/ip:8/il:P>.
SMITH, DINITIA. “Harvard Novelist Says Copying Was Unintentional.” (2006): n. page. Print. <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/books/25book.html?_r=0>.