Plagiarism
Plagiarism: Why it Continues to Occur?
Darian Camacho
English 111, Section 11
Professor Coulter
March 21, 2013
Plagiarism: Why it Continues to Occur? The increase in plagiarism has gained the attention of many institutions, administrators and educators, as well as researchers and the public. This increase has brought to attention the concern of why plagiarism continues to occur. In order to debate this concern we should first understand the definition and background of plagiarism, the factors which influence plagiarism, and what is or is not being done to prevent it. I will be looking into three articles in which my discussion will be based on. These articles include “Combating Plagiarism” by Brian Hansen, “Internet Plagiarism Among College Students” by Patrick M. Scanlon and David R. Newman, and “Plagiarism-A Survey” by Hermann Maurer, Frank Kappe, and Bilal Zaka. Defining plagiarism may be a difficult task because plagiarism can have more than one meaning. Plagiarism is “derived from the Latin word plagiarius,” meaning kidnapper (Hansen, 2003, p. 775). It is “a form of cheating that has been defined as the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person’s mind, and presenting it as one’s own” (Modern Language Association as cited in Hansen, 2003, p. 790). Maurer, Kappe, and Zaka give several examples of the different ways to plagiarize, which include: “turning in someone else’s work as your own, copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit, failing to put a quotation in quotation marks, giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation, changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit, and copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not” (2006, pp. 1050-1051). These are forms of plagiarism; however, many students are unaware of what plagiarism actually is. Plagiarism may be
Darian Camacho
English 111, Section 11
Professor Coulter
March 21, 2013
Plagiarism: Why it Continues to Occur? The increase in plagiarism has gained the attention of many institutions, administrators and educators, as well as researchers and the public. This increase has brought to attention the concern of why plagiarism continues to occur. In order to debate this concern we should first understand the definition and background of plagiarism, the factors which influence plagiarism, and what is or is not being done to prevent it. I will be looking into three articles in which my discussion will be based on. These articles include “Combating Plagiarism” by Brian Hansen, “Internet Plagiarism Among College Students” by Patrick M. Scanlon and David R. Newman, and “Plagiarism-A Survey” by Hermann Maurer, Frank Kappe, and Bilal Zaka. Defining plagiarism may be a difficult task because plagiarism can have more than one meaning. Plagiarism is “derived from the Latin word plagiarius,” meaning kidnapper (Hansen, 2003, p. 775). It is “a form of cheating that has been defined as the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person’s mind, and presenting it as one’s own” (Modern Language Association as cited in Hansen, 2003, p. 790). Maurer, Kappe, and Zaka give several examples of the different ways to plagiarize, which include: “turning in someone else’s work as your own, copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit, failing to put a quotation in quotation marks, giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation, changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit, and copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not” (2006, pp. 1050-1051). These are forms of plagiarism; however, many students are unaware of what plagiarism actually is. Plagiarism may be
References: Hansen, B. (2003). Combating Plagiarism. The CQ Researcher, 13(32), 773-796. Retrieved from http://www.cqpress.com/docs/Combating%20plagiarism.pdf Maurer, H, Kappe, F., & Zaka, B. (2006) Plagiarism: A survey. Journal of Universal Computer Science, 12(8), 1050-1084 Neumann, R. D., & Scanlon, M. P. (2002). Internet Plagiarism Among College Students. Journal of College Student Development, 43(3), 374-385