PLAGIARISM AND HONESTY

 

DEFINITION OF PLAGIARISM

 

Oxford English Dictionary (Vol XI, pg 947) 1989:

 

1. The action or practice of plagiarizing; the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication of one’s own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.( of another.

 

2,  A purloined idea, design, passage, or work.

 

Plagiarius in Latin means “kidnapper, seducer, plunderer”, a “literary thief” according to the Roman poet, Martial. 

 

Or as listed on www.dictionary.com:

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Plagiarism is not a simple and clear concept.  Students may intentionally choose to plagiarize their work, but others may reach the same outcome by different paths.  Students from diverse backgrounds may not come from a culture that values academic honesty as we in the West define it.  Some may plagiarize because they do not understand how they can write in their own voice—their words and their sentence structure.  Because paraphrasing and synthesizing are difficult skills to master especially when the content material is new to students, they will want to embrace the ideas and especially the words of experts.   Others may not have developed the skills to accurately document their information.  Still others may be struggling to learn English (Thompson). 

 

Unfortunately, the rampant spread of plagiarism, intentional or unintentional, has made many teachers and even schools choose NOT to assign research papers because they believe that such assignments only teach their students to plagiarize.  However, eliminating research assignments from the rigor of any field of learning would destroy the future of that discipline.

 

PLAGIARISM AND EDUCATION

 

Plagiarism tears at the ethical basis of education.  Words and ideas are the intellectual currency of any school.  Stealing instead of learning them destroys exactly what education is.  Plagiarism can also become a legal issue when copyright laws are broken and the perpetrator is held accountable in a court of law.  However, educators realize a third circle of Dante’s plagiarism Inferno: the lost educational opportunity. 

 

In Amy Tan’s autobiographical essays, The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, she discovered a website rich with misinformation.  The following advertisement appeared:

 

Do you need a quality paper on Amy Tan—today, tomorrow, next week, or next month?

 

Since 1979, our experts on Amy Tan have helped students worldwide by providing the best, lowest-priced writing service on the Internet.  If you’ve waited too long to start your paper on Amy Tab, or have more writing than you can handle, we can help.  Our staff of over 200 professional writers located around the world has produced thousands of college term papers, essays, research papers, dissertations, theses, and book reports on all topics involving Amy Tan.  These excellent papers are available to you instantly for only $25.99 each.

 

Tan’s response was: “How dismal to think I can be instantly summed up for only $25.99.  These papers could not possibly be correct.  I’ve paid psychiatrists $200 for fifty minutes many times over, and I still don’t understand who I am” (Tan 115-6).

 

Anyone using the services of these “professional writers” rather than developing time management skills, doing the research, engaging in the learning process, and writing the paper will have lost a great opportunity not just to understand a little bit about Amy Tan, but also to learn about themselves.  If schools do not provide students the opportunity to research ideas and issues pertinent to each discipline, students do not learn the information nor the process. 

 

Plagiarism appears in four basic forms:

• Intentional plagiarism: the student hands in a paper someone else has written or purchased online
• Copied sentences without attribution are sutured together with sentences written in the students’ words
• The source of properly paraphrased information is missing
• Quotation marks are missing.

 

There are many research studies to determine the extent of plagiarism, intentional or unintentional.  One survey of 246 graduate students found that 55% had used passages from original sources but alter the words with synonyms or deletions; 16% copied passages without using quotation marks; less than 5% handed in a paper that someone else had written (Baruchson-Arbib & Yaari). The more recent the study, the higher the numbers become because of increasing evidence of plagiarism in the work of students and even professional writers. 

 

Nevertheless, the effect—plagiarism—is the same regardless of the cause.  A corpse is still a corpse whether the person was murdered or died accidentally.  Plagiarism is still academic dishonesty whether intended or not.

 

PRINTED VS ELECTRONIC SOURCES

 

Students see different levels of culpability when using information from printed sources as opposed to Internet sources (Baruchson-Arbib & Yaari).  Information from the Internet is much more vulnerable to plagiarism because it is so easy to copy/paste into a paper.  However, plagiarism from the Internet is also more likely to happen than from paper sources because students believe that information from the Internet is public domain and need not be cited.   In contrast, books and other printed sources require a location, like a library, that may even have limited accessibility.  Unlike printed material, websites often do not give an author’s name, further contributing to the sense that there is no real owner of this information. 

 

Furthermore, the conventions for citing a source from printed material are clear, but at times nebulous for sources found on the Internet.   Sometimes the guidelines provided by the various style manuals will admit to the ephemeral nature of Internet sources and make suggestions for creating a citation and bibliography entry.  Students conclude that even the experts cannot make sense of formatting documentation.  For these reasons, students see plagiarizing information from an Internet source as less unethical, if at all, than from a printed source (Baruchson-Arbib & Yaari). 

 

ACADEMIC HONESTY

 

Teaching and supporting academic integrity is a challenge.  Entering high schools and colleges today are students who have spent their formative years with the Internet and have accepted unethical use of information as the standard (Kellogg). As students see the Internet as the source for more and more of the information they need in order to succeed in school, and as libraries abandon paper sources in order to become totally digital, this challenge becomes greater.  However, students can be taught and be held accountable for knowing right from wrong, academic honesty from dishonesty.  PaperToolsPro™ cannot change students’ morality, but it can help them make the right decisions when writing research papers without plagiarism.

 

Because someone’s words, ideas, and entire papers can be kidnapped and plundered, schools have created Honesty Policies so that everyone understands what honest work is and what dishonest work is along with its consequences.

 

Writers are honest

• when they actually did the work that they say they did
• when they use someone else’s ideas and they cite that source
• when they use someone else’s exact words and do so accurately, usiing quotation marks and citing the source
• when they present information from researched sources and give an honest and accurate rendering of the information as that source intended it to mean.

 

PaperToolsPro™ supports academic integrity by enabling students to

• put information in their own words and compare it to the original passage
• append documentation to each note card
• create accurate bibliography and citation entries in the correct MLA, APA, ACS, CBE, AAAS, or Chicago styles.

 

Furthermore, students may less likely procrastinate because

• they are more comfortable using a computer than writing by hand
• their already typed note cards can be copy/pasted into a draft
• they can concentrate on the content of their research rather than on the form.

 

Students today lack the training and experience to work with print and electronic sources.  They may not even realize the necessity for learning these skills.  According to Rebecca Howard from Syracuse University, “We are…in the midst of a revolution in literacy.”  Teachers must learn to respond with revolutionary methods and engage students in learning, not just in earning points, grades, and academic degrees.  The Council of Writing Program Administrators took the position:  “Students should understand research assignments as opportunities for genuine and rigorous inquiry and learning” (Howard).  The best plagiarism prevention program is good teaching.  We believe that PaperToolsPro™ reinforces good teaching and good learning.

 

References

 

Baruchson-Arbib, Shifra and Eti Yaari. Printed Versus Internet Plagiarism: A Study of Students’Perception. Retrieved 08-AUG-2005, http://container.zkm.de/ijie/ijie/no001/ijie_001_05_baruchson.pdf.

 

Howard, R.M. (2003). At Issue: Should Educators Use Commercial Services to Combat Plagiarism?. Congressional Quarterly Researcher, 13 (32), 789. Retrieved 09-AUG-2005, http://www.cqpress.com/docs/Combating%20Plagiarism.pdf.

 

Kellogg, Alex P. Students Plagiarize Less Than Many Think, a New Study Finds. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 09-AUG-2005, http://chronicle.com/free/2002/02/2002020101t.htm.

 

Thompson, Celia. Discourses on Plagiarism: To Discipline and Punish or to Teach and Learn? Retrieved 08-AUG-2005, http://www.bond.edu.au/hss/communication/ANZCA/papers/CThompsonPaper.pdf.