How to Write an Article Without Plagiarizing

There is an issue that is running rampant and not in our Universities or Schools although it does happen, but in our news and political venues. Areas where people should know about this issue especially well, or at least enough, to not fall pray to this issue. This issue is plagiarism, plagiarism is an issue that happens most frequently because students, sometimes instructors, journalist, and speech writers more frequently as of late have run out of time and have taken short cuts, or did not take notes well enough while researching to know when something is actually a direct quote, or not recognizing when they are having an original thought rather than paraphrasing. In this paper we will define plagiarism, in a way that hopefully will clearly illustrate exactly what plagiarism is. We will discuss research ethics, what Intentional, and Unintentional plagiarism is. I will give a couple examples of recent perpetrators of plagiarism, and discuss the ramifications of plagiarizing someone’s work. Finally, we will discuss how to not fall prey to plagiarism in your own papers, publishing’s, and speeches.

When we discuss plagiarism, the first thing we need to know is what exactly plagiarism is. Plagiarism is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an act of copying the ideas or words of another person without giving credit to that person”. This means that if the definition had been taken word for word and presents it as the writers own personal definition, the writer would have committed an act of plagiarism. Also, if the writer has no idea what plagiarism is, and then looked up the word and paraphrased (“…paraphrasing means to rephrase somebody else’s words into one’s own words”) and presented it as their own definition then again the writer would have committed an act of plagiarism. But wait, does that mean that if the writer works in say a school, newspaper, or some other profession where they need to be aware of what plagiarism is on a daily bases that they then need to always remember where they got there definition from? Well that would be cool if they could but no. Within certain professions and subjects there are allowances made for common knowledge. “Common knowledge is information that is widely known, such as the fact that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.” Definitions are one of those subjects that do not ALWAYS need to be sourced, as it can be considered common knowledge. One thing to keep in mind though is that quoting the definitions and properly citing where you got the definition from removes some if not all doubt the reader may have in the definition, and therefore improves the reader’s view of your credibility.

The essence of plagiarism at its root, is about the writers ethics, and most importantly the ethics used when researching, and writing a paper. If a writer stops and honestly thinks to themselves, “Is this ethical, does this feel good (ignoring the relief feeling of being done with it), or how would it feel if someone copied my work without giving me credit for the hard work I put into it?” These question will only really help to stop the worst form of plagiarism; Intentional Plagiarism, kind of self-explanatory but for the sake of clarity Intentional Plagiarism is when someone has taken someone else’s (published by definition) work and has attempted to pass the work off as their own work in part or in whole. This is the one form of plagiarism that you cannot avoid other than, remembering this is not ethical and I should not do it!

The type of plagiarism that is avoidable is Accidental Plagiarism, this type of plagiarism is when someone typically did not take notes well enough, have not properly paraphrased, or believing that there thought was 100% an original thought when in fact it was a paraphrase of something they read in the process of researching for the paper they are writing. We will talk about ways to avoid accidental plagiarism later in this paper. The final type of plagiarism we will discuss, is much less known, and actually a fairly new concept, and still largely up for debate is Self-Plagiarism. The concept of Self-Plagiarism or at least the need to monitor and acknowledge it is so new it had its first mention in the 2010, 6th edition of the American Psychological Association (APA). “Self-Plagiarism is defined as a type of plagiarism in which the writer republishes a work in its entirety or reuses portions of a previously written text while authoring a new work.” What, wait a minute you can plagiarize yourself? But the definition of plagiarism says using someone else’s work. Well yes that is true, but we need to think about two things here the first thing is the ethics of it. If I write a paper for Professor A and also turn it into Professor B for a different class is that ethically right? Ethics gets a bit fuzzy here, because it is your own work, and some may say that it is just good use of your time and resources to full fill both requirements with one assignment. However, that will depend on two things your schools policy on self-plagiarizing, if it has one, and if your professors are both ok with you turning in the same paper for different classes. If you are seeing the opportunity to do this and want to attempt this, you need to have that discussion with both professors and make sure they are okay with it. The second thing we need to consider is if the paper is going to be published, if this is the case then there is allot more to think about here, copyright infringement which we will not delve into here, and getting published twice for one subject body of work. This second point is where some professors may have a problem with you using the same paper twice. Sometimes if you do well enough they may want you to publish, and even if they don’t they are trying to prepare you for the job market also known as “The Real World.” Where if you were to for example have two jobs and somehow got an assignment from both that is the same work. Well, wow that would just be a mess of conflict of interest and more importantly proprietary knowledge. Meaning both companies will have a reasonable expectation that any work you do for them belongs to them and no other company. By you sharing it violate not just your contract you signed, but perhaps even some laws as well. In this example your professors are your two boss’ at the two different companies. Are they ok with you sharing this knowledge with a likely competitor? Maybe, if it is not something critical to them maintaining their edge in the market they may not care but chances are they will care, and will be unwilling to share the project.As may be also likely with your professors.

Two of the biggest or maybe just the most well-known perpetrators of plagiarism in recent news was Melania Trump and Jayson Blair. In the case of Malania Trump, she is as you know a political figure. So she like many other political figures, did not write her own speech. The one we will be speaking of today, was written by one of her husband’s staffers, for her. When she spoke to the staffer about the direction and content of the speech, she had read some of the passages from Michele Obama’s speech and mentioned she viewed her as an inspiration. The staffer took this information and wrote the speech and though unintentional had parts that were nearly verbatim from Michele Obama’s speech. For the speech writer this could have been a fire-able offense and the end of any carrier as a speech writer in the political venue, and in fact the speech writer offered to resign because of the error she made in not checking the speech she wrote against Michele Obama’s, knowing it was used as inspiration. From a political stand point this act of plagiarism could have distracted from what Trump actually wanted to relay to his constituents, and though it did do just that, the Trumps just looked at it as a whole lot of free press. Plagiarism in the political world is something that actually happens quite frequently. More than really should probably, however this is usually with allies, and allies usually will not mind if an ally borrows pieces of their speech. Also allies share speech writers, who at times may reuse work that should not be reused. The reason Malania Trump’s speech grabbed so much attention, over the many other infractions of plagiarism in politics is primarily because the Hillary Clinton team was trying to direct unfavorable light on the Trump campaign. Also, though Malania sees Michele as an inspiration they were not political allies, and Democrats and Republicans seem to be pretty territorial over there parties work. This could have gone much worse for the Trump’s and the staffer who wrote the speech, this all just washed away as there was more important issues that became prevalent in the course of the campaign.

Case in point of how plagiarism can really ruin you and your career. Jayson Blair, was a reporter for the New York Times one of if not the most respected papers. He had a promising career and had been with the paper for four years, all the while plagiarizing other papers, misquoting, and fabricating facts. The New York Times viewed this as not just a betrayal of trust by Jayson Blair but that they themselves had betrayed there readers by not catching it earlier. Due to his actions not only did he lose all of his credibility, but the New York Times lost some of its credibility. With the loss of Jayson’s credibility he was let go from the New York Times but will also likely, never work for another paper again.

Now, that we know what plagiarism is and what some of the real world ramifications of committing this act can be. Let us now discuss how we avoid plagiarism. As mentioned earlier in this paper to avoid Intentional Plagiarism, we weigh our actions against the ethics of what we are doing, or if your internal compass is that messed up you still think it is a good idea, just don’t. You may think you will not be caught, and you might not at first, but remember Jayson Blair got away with it for 4 years. But, he was still caught, and so will you eventually if you intentionally plagiarize.

Ok so we agree not to intentionally plagiarize, but how do we avoid unintentionally plagiarizing. That is actually a bit of work, but worth it when weighed against the alternatives. Avoiding this form of plagiarism starts as soon as you start taking notes. If you right something down that you pulled from a paper verbatim quote it. Yes, even in your notes, this will allow you to more easily recognize that it is a quote and not just a thought you jotted down while reading up on the subject. With your quotes and any other notes even paraphrased thoughts you need to right down what article, or book you pulled it from. The date you accessed or found the article, and the page number you found it on. This will help you to find it again later if you want to find more info on that thought, and it will also make sure you know how to reference that material when you write your paper.

When you begin writing your paper pay attention to the excellent notes we know you took, and when we reference something from that article either as a quote or paraphrase reference that material either directly before or immediately following the thought, quote, or phrase, this includes quotes or thoughts from other papers you, yourself have written (to avoid self-plagiarizing). Doing this combined with correctly writing your citation page, should ensure you do not get accused of plagiarism.

In the event that you do get accused of plagiarism, regardless of the effort you went through to make sure you did not plagiarize anyone. This is not the end of the world, print out any articles you used from the internet or research databases to make sure you can refer back to them later (sometimes what you find today is not there tomorrow). Keep your notes, just because the paper is done does not mean you are done with your notes. All the material you used during the research and writing of your paper may be just what you need to get out from under the accusation of plagiarism.

References

1. Louw, H. h. (2017). DEFINING PLAGIARISM: STUDENT AND STAFF PERCEPTIONS OF A GREY CONCEPT. South African Journal of Higher Education, 31(5), 118. doi:10.28535/31-5-580
2. Melania Trump plagiarism row: Staffer admit role in speech. (2016, July 20). BBC News. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36850215 [Accessed 21 Jan. 2018].
3. Palmquist. (2009). The Bedford Researcher with 2009 MLA and 2010 APA Updates, 3rd Edition. [Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781457600838/ p.88-91, 97.
4. Plagiarism. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarism
5. US reporter ‘lied to readers’. 2003, May 11) BBC News. [online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3018505.stm [Accessed 21 Jan. 2018].
6. White Paper The Ethics Of Self Plagiarism. (2011) iParadigms LLC.