Academic honsety/plagarism - Essay Example

Academic Honesty Academic Honesty To begin with, I would like to say that the surfing of www.plagiarism.org has really changed my understanding on plagiarism. It made me to learn a lot of things that I could never imagine of before. Initially, I thought that plagiarism simply means copy pasting another person’s work without acknowledging its source. However, now, courtesy of the web site, that plagiarism entails much more than that. The first lesson I learnt is that plagiarism is can be broadened to mean fraudulent activity that involves theft, use, passing off and presentation of another person’s work without giving them the credit that they deserve as original owners of such information.

It was also surprising to learn that, common practices such as copying words without using quotation marks; putting an incorrect source of the information; or altering the order the order of words from another person’s work. I was also perplexed that productions of a work in which majority of the words are uplifted from another person’s is regarded as plagiarism regardless of whether such information is correctly cited or not. A part from this, I also learnt that such theft do not only apply to written words, but can be extended to still and moving images and music.

Any attempt to use such materials without acknowledging the source is an act of plagiarism. So, whenever one takes images or videos from the internet, they should know that it is a plagiarism. This was new tome because all along, I have been engaging in such activities without knowing that it also qualifies to be a plagiarism. The only thing I could have done to escape to be safe is to properly cite such images or seek the permission of the rightful owner (Jude, 2007). Moreover, I also learnt that plagiarism is categorized into ten groups: Hybrid, CTRL-C, Clone, Re-tweet, 404 Error, Find-replace, Remix, Recycle, Mashup and Aggregator.

Of all these types of plagiarism, I was fascinated by recycling in which I discovered that one can even plagiarize one’s own work. As explained in the article, if a person copes part of their previous work, then it is plagiarism (Andreescu, 2012). All in all, each of these involves an act that many people always do while putting down their researches or ideas on paper. However, for them to be avoided, everyone needs to acquire the right information regarding them. Besides, deliberate attempts should be made to be original or provide all the appropriate citation for all the sources used.

In conclusion, I would like to point out that this web site has provided me with quite exhaustive information. Actually, it fully explores the topic of plagiarism by giving clear and precise definitions, explanations and examples. Moreover, it goes ahead to highlight all the types of plagiarism that are common amongst the scholars. Lastly, it tells of how all these unethical and unlawful acts can be avoided. For this reason, I commend the web site for being credible, informative and educative.

It is worth surfing. Had it not been for it, I would have plagiarized without knowing it. ReferencesJude C. (2007) A Handbook for Deterring Plagiarism in Higher Education. Oxford: The Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning DevelopmentAndreescu, L. (November 2012). "Self-Plagiarism in Academic Publishing: The Anatomy of a Misnomer" Science and Engineering Ethics.