Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty in Education

Defining Plagiarism

Plagiarism is commonly understood as the reiteration and substitution of an author’s idea as one’s own, without giving credit where credit is due. Plagiarism can be accidental or intentional, but always leads to the duplication of work (i.e., art, literature, or song) which can diminish the authenticity of the author guilty of plagiarizing. A common style of writing that results in plagiarism is APA writing. This style of writing requires the student to take on the role of a researcher and find articles, books, or conduct their own experiments. Writing articles is tedious work and some people do away with taking time to learn the rules and guidelines about plagiarism, which increases the frequency of plagiarism happening.

Defining Self-Plagiarism

Self-plagiarism in comparison to plagiarism of another author, is considered the lesser of two evils because moralistically, it is better to steal from yourself than from someone else. This notion is proven false due to the simple issue of text overlap. In the journalism industry, many authors will face the challenge of plagiarism.

Plagiarism is a concern in the field of science because their reward system is dependent the accuracy of their authors and editors. A problem people face is putting the words of others into their own words without plagiarizing the author. Text recycling occurs more than 6% in the journalism world, which opens doors to plagiarism and fabrication of information of future texts. Preemptive measures (i.e., implementation of rules and policies, increasing research integrity awareness, and attention of publication practices of productive authors) can be conducted to reduce text recycling in the journalism community. Teaching only one skill to avoid text recycling will not be as effective as offering many different approaches and warnings to look for to avoid plagiarism. The availability of previously published work is making the need to plagiarize less appropriate because one can easily access and cite original publications.

A stepping stone to plagiarism is cheating, not just in English class, but in any other area of school. To prevent or reduce the amount of plagiarism a few steps can be followed: provide a quiz to test the understanding of plagiarism, if the students do well overall, then you can come to the conclusion that they are aware of the rules; academic dishonesty is great in theory, but students will not consistently tell the professor when another student is cheating; motivation and encouragement is key to shaping students who are confident in the use of their APA writing techniques. Underlying causes such as a lack of understanding, not wanting to, feeling overwhelmed by other obligations, or a lack of self-confidence explain why some students commit academic dishonesty (Bluestein, 2018, p. 11). Professors act calm and collected when they discover cheating or plagiarism, but they can also address the issue and make an example of what the consequences are to the offender and all the other students. Professors can feel anger, violence, and disbelief when they catch plagiarism.

Students can spot when plagiarism has occurred, but this knowledge does not carry itself to apply directly to the student. The gap between differentiating reading comprehension and academic writing explains the motive to why students plagiarize sometimes (Stander, 2018, p. 10). Paraphrasing of text can vary from person to person because each student will interpret what they read differently, so if plagiarism is present, it can be concluded that students may not understand the material they are reading. Some strategies (i.e., reading and writing exercises, tutorials, patchwriting, and summarizing) have been found to reduce the presence of plagiarism from students in university, these strategies focus on – but are not limited to – finding what the theme and core method of a passage is.

Reuse of an idea, theory, or entirety of one’s own published work with the intention of selling it as new information is called self-plagiarism. Academic fraud, duplication, and plagiarism are large concerns for editors (MacDermid, 2018, p. 427). Excluding open access publications, the publication process is where self-plagiarism can be most accurately monitored. The limits of self-plagiarism are still blurred because some phrases, such as measurement or facts, cannot be reworded. To resolve this confusion, citation of the work being referenced is required. The more authors reference previous works in their own publications should be aiding their own personal ideas and contributions to what they are speaking about, but there is a fine line between framing your thoughts and stealing information from other authors.

The accusation of plagiarism can mistakenly occur when inadequately paraphrased material is still cited or when an author replaced words with the appropriate synonym. Due to software intended to detect plagiarism, stealing of literary work is much harder to get away with undetected. Indiana University, University of Southern Mississippi, San Jose State, and University of North Carolina all have plagiarism tutorials online to help anyone comprehend and practice avoiding plagiarism (Suter & Suter, 2018, p. 153).

Ghostwriting is whenever someone hires another person to write a paper or article then proceeds to publish the work as their own. Plagiarism and ghostwriting are unfair and dishonest to those who regularly take the time and make the effort to write their own work. Universities possess the power to make students who plagiarize right their wrong through material punishment, but many do not correctly implement or sustain the penalty given. Ghostwriting is legal, but the faking authorship may be punishable. There is drastic lack of detection software for ghostwriting than there is for plagiarism. Ghostwriting is mostly caught by professors or editors who are familiar with the writing styles of those in their class or which are hired. The best way to avoid most forms of plagiarism is to rely on oral examinations or reports, but many universities are not trained to work that way and would greatly increase the workload for professors.

Unintended plagiarism or self-plagiarism has the same consequences as deliberate plagiarism because in both cases, someone’s livelihood is put on the line. Innocent until proven guilty is always assumed if there is no hard proof that one plagiarized. The connotation of authors as people who are ready to plagiarize should be altered. Authors are not criminals, but people who sometimes struggle with finding their own voice, but when they do, many people benefit. Wrongfully committing a student of plagiarism can ruin their academic future, so it is imperative that a university is absolutely certain plagiarism occurred. Authors are often uninformed of the rights an academic author may possess. Creation can only come from reviewing, applying, developing, and refining knowledge.

Focusing on plagiarism in the social sciences it is evident that the majority of publications are gathered from editorial content and ethics. Self-plagiarism is a concept that can prove hard for some professors to teach. Some universities have a rule which states one cannot submit the same paper to multiple classes or submit their work to be published more than once. Understanding the distinctions of guidelines for published or unpublished student work would lessen confusion between editorials and research articles, as well as professors and students in the field of educational research.

Discussion

The various names for the term plagiarism (i.e., borrowing of text, text recycling, and academic dishonesty) leads one to make a connection that it is an accidental and somewhat laughable act. The contradiction between these feelings and the severity of plagiarism displays how important it is to give credit where credit is due. Some believe the various forms of plagiarism and cheating can be aided by professors connecting with their students and building a bond that is not a sterile as a basic student teacher interaction. This method seems good on paper, but I believe that a strong disciplinary system should be linked to this plan because the cordiality of a closer relationship can mistakenly lead to one or both parties being taken advantage of. In the past, the online databases and clouds did not exist, making it harder for a new journal article to guarantee that the reuse of text from another author did not occur. Nowadays anyone can find just about anything on the internet so this helps insure that before anyone publishes an article, they can check to make sure their work is their own. Plagiarism, in a university setting, tends to stem from misunderstanding or miscommunication between a professor and the students or a student and the material they are gathering information from. I have struggled with plagiarism in my experience as a university student. After a year of writing and rewriting I developed the skills needed to quickly and efficiently translate information from other authors to aid in expressing my thoughts on a topic. These skills have been useful in many areas of my life outside of school.

References

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