Are you Plagiarise to Copyrighted materials??

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http://www.masternewmedia.org/online-plagiarism-how-to-detect-fight-and-report-the-unlicensed-republication-of-your-content/

The issues of plagiarism are getting serious recently. The term ‘plagiarism’ defines as someone passing off of another person’s ideas, works and acted as his. It is a form of cheating and works against the academic integrity (Ballard, 2008).

Most students are ethical and hard-working; they think of creative ideas and making a lot of researches to come out with their assignments. However, due to the easy information accessibility on the Internet, some students tend to have the opportunity to take shortcuts from the Internet in doing their coursework which committing as plagiarism. Two common types of plagiarism are direct copy messages without citing the original contributor and reproduce the materials of others by changing the contributors’ names and use it as their own (Handa, 2008).

As plagiarism is out of control, many organizations even universities are working ahead to prevent the issues of plagiarism to get spread. For instance, an Internet based programme ‘Turnitin’ is used to detect and check the percentage of plagiarism. Many first year university students got caught of high percentage in plagiarising on their assignments as they normally used people’s ideas without citing correctly. According to Joshua Landau cited in Ballard (2008), there are three common reasons that caused plagiarism:

1.      Intentional theft— getting peer pressure, competition and convince oneself that ‘everyone is doing the same thing’

2.      Source-memory error—fail to trace the sources of ideas

3.      Ignorance—students may not have the ideas to paraphrase material they got

The video below explains 'What is Plagiarism?',

Video designed by paulrobesonlibrary from www.youtube.com

Furthermore, copyright and fair use is also included in the discussion of plagiarism.

The term ‘Copyright infringement’ means someone unauthorised copy of a work which subject to copyright (Allen, Clem, Elleven, Andrews & Cagle, 2004). For instance, it is considered as fair use to photocopy only one chapter from a book or one article from a journal issue without photocopy the entire work. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to do it your own work and ideas. If you refer someone’s ideas, you must cite clearly and provide reference which author’s work you are using.

Plagiarism is against by law. Think carefully before you do!



Image source from: http://knol.google.com/k/plagiarism-on-knol#

 

Reference List:

Allen, J.M., Clem, K.E., Elleven, R.K., Andrews, C.G., & Cagle, L.S. (2004). Copyright and Fair Use: An issue of ethics in a changing learning environment. The Texas Journal of Distance Learning [Online serial], 1(2), 1-8. Available at:

www.sageperformance.com/drjeffallen/DrA/Related.../copyright.pdf [Accessed 13 November 11]

Ballard S. 2008. Give Credit Where Credit is Due: Avoiding Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement. [ONLINE] Available at: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:kPG7VPPvCngJ:portaldev.alliant.edu/wps/wcm/connect/resources/file/eb31fd0e6692ab3/Information%2520on%2520Plagiarism.pdf?MOD%3DAJPERES%26attachment%3Dtrue+Give+Credit+Where+Credit+is+Due:+Avoiding+Plagiarism+and+Copyright+Infringement&hl=en&gl=my&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiVv4yFLpP76y1a5r9bQaa4Xmp4CgOi15IxwKsXKv4H1cH3EKcZ6eEeEvJcV4UY20txwkcUIDSb1mXpTuPO7cQJVvooX-nnG7TrlPbMCKDQiFVRmuZJOPdEEvArjFcmixp0ENJ6&sig=AHIEtbQ3EGBcI7B33lzSmxP4pk7gmQD23Q. [Accessed 15 November 11].

Handa, S 2008, Plagiarism and publication ethics: Dos and dons, Indian Journal of Dermatology, Venereology, and Leprology, vol.74, no. 4, pp.301-303.

paulrobesonlibrary. (2007). What is Plagiarism? [Online Video]. 13 November. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P05vgxDoPU. [Accessed 14 November 2011].