Monday, April 9, 2007

What the Heck is Academic Plagiarism?

Students,

When I was browsing a blog of one of our groups, I was taken aback by the recurrence to the old habits, i.e. of using somebody else's essays and giving no credit to the author.
Any work in your blog is your own, unless cited. If it is NOT your work and it is NOT cited, it is plagiarism.

Image Source: http://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/jfm/plagiarism/plagiari.jpg

There are two types of plagiarism:
1. Deliberate Plagiarism is intentionally using the ideas, words, phrases, opinions, arguments, full paragraphs or whole essays of someone else and deceptively passing them off as your own. Buying or taking a paper, or any portion of a paper, from the Internet, word-for-word copying without quotation marks or deceptive rewording without properly naming any source is, in no uncertain terms, literary theft and academic fraud.
2. Unintentional Plagiarism--no less serious--involves the improper and unacknowledged use of ideas, words, phrases, opinions, or arguments that do not originate with the writer. Apologetic explanations such as forgetfulness, sloppiness, haste, carelessness, or uncertainties about the use of citation do not excuse the student from this type of plagiarism.

Please don't forget to document the sources you are using for texts, graphics, video and audio files.

Be conscientious, be honest, be aware!

More on Plagiarism:
1. Plagiarism Rules: What Every Blogger Needs To Know

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