What Is Plagiarism and How to Recognize it

¶ … Avoiding Plagiarism Often, writers may not properly cite original sources wherefrom they obtained ideas or phrases for a paper. Plagiarism denotes a case of an author portraying the intellectual property of another as one's own, original work. There are several forms of plagiarism; these include: absence of citations, copy-pasting a phrase/sentence from a source into one's own paper without changing, or inaccurate paraphrasing (Walden University, 2015). An author must take great care to ensure that plagiarism is absent from his/her work.

Once an author has published/handed out a paper, he/she cannot further influence readers regarding what has been penned. It is in the hands of reviewers or readers to decide whether a work is plagiarized. Authors should pay particular attention to ensure that no aspect of one's work raises questions.

One can identify plagiarism in a written work by: 1) ascertaining if the words and ideas are those of the writer himself (particularly while explaining somebody else's work); and 2) ascertaining the source of phrases or ideas, including elements such as: Ideas, theories, or views of another individual Any content that isn't common knowledge; e.g., facts discovered by another author, graphs, statistics, drawings, etc. Quotations of somebody else's written/spoken statements Paraphrase of somebody else's written/spoken statements (Saunders & Meek).

Extent to which the student plagiarized the original source One can conclude that the given passage is plagiarized, as the student has merely altered paragraph structure and changed some words/expressions. Furthermore, the first sentence's meaning has been altered by the writer. Two sentences from the passage you think are clear examples of plagiarism and an example of how to rephrase them in your own words 1) But it is hard to know if a conflict of interest between doctors, researchers, and the drug company stockholders has tainted the results.

This sentence could be rephrased as: It is, however, not an easy task to determine whether a "conflict of interest" has occurred between doctors and pharmaceutical researchers, corrupting the results (Crossen, 1994, p. 167). 2) Biomedical researchers incorporate strict rules of science into their work, which is examined by peers. This sentence could be rephrased as: According to Crossen (1994), research workers in the field of biomedicine follow strict scientific principles in their experimentations, which are evaluated by peers.

How to avoid plagiarism Keep sources in correct context Every time one refers to a source while writing, one must ensure that the context of the source and its ideas are properly grasped. One must also bear in mind the context it is written in. For instance, an essay book, whose publisher is politically biased, may not offer adequate information on a topic. Plan ahead Often, a study may take longer than one expects.

Sufficient time should be allotted to looking up sources, taking down notes, and figuring out how they can be incorporated into one's work. One may be forced to pay less attention if one is stressed, fatigued or leaves off the task until the eleventh hour. One may make an honest mistake, but that doesn't save one from being charged with plagiarism.

Authors must take extra care while jotting down language and ideas from sources on the internet and remember what ideas and language are one's own, and which was noted down from a source. Don't cut and paste: File and label your sources Copy-pasting an internet-based source's paragraphs/sentences into one's work and leaving it unchanged, or typing sentences out word for word from a book is unacceptable.

One must, instead, make it a practice to note information from different sources into separate documents, and include, without fail, complete citation information (precisely) for them.