From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Copying & pasting can lead to plagiarism
Plagiarism is the act of copying another person's ideas, words orwriting and pretending that they are one's own work.[1] It can involve violatingcopyrightlaws.[2] College students who are caught plagiarizing can beexpelled fromschool. It canpermanently damage a student'sreputation.[3] Writers who plagiarize commit seriouslegal andethical violations.[3]
Direct Plagiarism – copying and pasting someone else's work, or making minor changes to someone else's work to pass it off as their own.[4]
Self-Plagiarism – Happens when a student submits all or part of their own previous work without getting permission from all involvedprofessors.[4]
Mosaic Plagiarism – Or "patch writing," is when parts of other works are copied without usingquotation marks. It can also be when a student keeps the same structure and meaning of an original passage and only usessynonyms.[4]
Accidental Plagiarism – This can happen when a student does not cite their sources. It can also happen when a studentparaphrases information without givingattribution (credit to the original author or authors).[4]
Mash-up – Two or more data sources that have been turned into one. They may be graphics, texts,songs, and video from various media.[5][6]
Many cases of plagiarism, especially in schools, can lead to internalpunishment.[3] Certain people have been punished in alegal court for plagiarism, mostly due to copyright claims. Court cases include:
Any work created in the US after 1st. Mar 1989 is automatically protected bycopyright, even if there is no copyright notice attached to the work.[7] Thedefendant could sue for any copying of this kind ofintellectual property.[7]
It is usually not enough to know what plagiarism is, students must also know how to avoid plagiarism.[8] Writers are as responsible for intentional plagiarism as they are for accidental plagiarism.[8] It is important to cite sources while doingresearch. Putting this off until later can cause some sources to be forgotten or incorrectly cited.[8]
When using a source, make sure the content is in the samecontext as the paper.[8] Try to avoid usingbiased sources.[8] Always take the time to find the correct information about a source.[8] For example, some web pages may be part of a largerwebsite. While a web page article may seem fair and balanced, it can be affected by the overall bias or reputation of the publisher.[8] Using something out of context can also lead to charges of plagiarism.[8] Taking the time to properly cite all sources in a paper or work is paying respect to the original ideas of others.[9] This is all part of doing good work.
