What Is Plagiarism - Research Paper Example

Even though the presence of plagiarism can be witnessed everywhere in the writing world, academic world seems to be the most affected one. Current academic curricula are developing with the help of assignments, project works and term papers. As part of the home works, teachers often ask students to prepare some assignments on different topics. Students on the other hand prepare assignments with the help of illegal channels. According to a study conducted among American High school students in 1998, “83% of the students found to be actively engaged in cheating activities and 67% had copied someone’s home work” (Foss& Lathrop, p.3). This paper briefly analyses various dimensions of plagiarism.

We are living in a world of shortcuts. The generations in the past were ready to do hard work. On the other hand current generation and the upcoming generation are not much interested in doing hard work for learning something. For many students, earning an academic qualification at any cost is the major objective of education rather than learning. The development of technologies such as internet helped them a lot in passing academic examinations without much hard works. It should be noted that internet is an ocean of knowledge.

Moreover, it helps students to get their assignments done through others. When such shortcuts are readily available to them, many students use it to avoid the agony of self-preparing difficult assignments. Roberts (2007) mentioned that “lack of research skills and writing skills, problems in evaluating internet sources, confusion about how to cite sources, pressure, poor time management and organizational skills, cultural factors etc are the major reasons for the students’ habit of plagiarism” (Roberts, p.2). It should be noted that it is difficult for the students to prepare academic papers without using the ideas of others.

However, while using the ideas of others, it is necessary to acknowledge it. When a student deliberately uses the ideas of others without giving credit to them, it can be labelled as intentional plagiarism. On the other hand “Unintentional Plagiarism occurs when students use the words or ideas of others but fail to quote or give credit, perhaps because they don't know how” (Intentional and unintentional plagiarism). Many students have the habit of copy paste the ideas of others in their academic papers.

Some students may describe the ideas of others in their own words which are referred as paraphrasing. In any case, proper citation is necessary to acknowledge that these ideas were indebted to others. While using the ideas of others; directly and indirectly, students should cite it in the body of the paper as well as in the bibliography. Direct quotations should be enclosed in the paper within quotation marks. Moreover, bulk quotations (More than 40 words) should be marked as a separate block in the paper.

On the other hand, while paraphrasing, it is not necessary to mark it as a separate block; however, the sources of the ideas should be mentioned at the end of the paraphrasing paragraph. In some cases, students may generate ideas which might have already expressed by others. It is difficult for them to know whether these ideas were already generated or not. In such cases, plagiarism checking software can help. For example, “Washington College has contracted with Turnitin.com, a web-based plagiarism prevention service.

Students can use this service to avoid plagiarism” (Guidelines for the Use of the Turnitin.com Plagiarism Detection System). Moreover, plagiarism detection software has the ability to detect the percentage of plagiarism in a paper. Students can use such software to detect and eliminate plagiarism as much as they want. Under citing and over citing are not good while