How to Avoid Plagiarism - Essay Example

Plagiarism is a serious problem. In a questionnaire survey of teachers conducted in the U.K., at least 58% of those interviewed felt that students had plagiarized from the Internet (ZDNet, 2008).

 In a survey conducted on 3,500 students from American and Canadian universities, about 23–25% of students admitted to having plagiarized their work (Das, 2003.)

 The Internet has truly become a vast source of knowledge and information, which can be accessed rapidly. However, it has also affected academic integrity. Instead of working hard in the library by reading books, or taking notes, one may get tempted to just search the Internet and copy information verbatim. This ‘cut and paste’ culture is to be condemned.

 Although the Internet is a vast source of information one must consider all sources of knowledge and use only reliable and standard Internet sources with proper citation.

 Plagiarism can indeed be considered as "theft of intellectual property” because just like how the theft of physical property is an offense, borrowing a person’s work without acknowledgment is like theft. After all, a lot of mental effort and time would have gone into the original work. The least one can do is to properly acknowledge it.

 Plagiarism can be avoided by proper citation. Some suggestions to eliminate both inadvertent and deliberate plagiarism include the following:

1. Deliberate plagiarism is deliberately using another person’s work without any credit to the original work. It includes ‘cutting and pasting’ directly from a source, paying someone else to write the assignment, etc (Study & Learning Centre, 2005).

 Deliberate plagiarism can be avoided by planning well ahead of the assignment, meticulously noting the sources, making rough drafts, having proper communication with the tutor (Lehigh University, 2006), and avoiding the temptation of using another writer, etc.

2. A citation is required whenever an “idea, quote (written or spoken), data, image or other content that is not yours unless it is common knowledge” (The Pennsylvania State University, 2007) is used.

 There are different citation styles (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc). The author should choose the appropriate style as instructed by the tutor (The Pennsylvania State University, 2007.)

3. If exact words or phrases are used, then they must be used within quotations. Only essential words or phrases must be quoted; entire paragraphs need not be quoted. The author's name must be mentioned in the quoted sentence (Stolley, 2008.)
4. Paraphrasing should be used whenever possible.