MyFoxPhilly

Living in a "cyber" world where we each have an unlimited supply of information at our hands I often wonder if when we hit that copy and paste button we ever consider the term "plagiarism"?

I remember way back, when I was in college working on a Masters one professor that made it a point to discuss this subject with every class he taught. Sure as students we rolled our eyes and thought to ourselves "just how does this have anything to do with me", but now that I have reached this point in my life I have come to understand the relivance and importance of that lecture.

I am sure that most if not all of us had at least one class, probably in high school were we were introduced to the concept of "plagiarism". We were taught the proper way to "site" and "share" the words, thoughts and ideas of someone else but somehow here in the great big world of the Internet those lessons are easily forgotten and I have to wonder why?

Maybe it is that we just don't remember the proper format to use or maybe it's that it is so simple to just put it out there as our own that we don't feel the need to give proper credit to the original author. For some people it is a way to look and feel smarter than they actually are, or a way to innocently share information on a topic of interest. While they are all valid explainations they do not however constitute proper form, nor in any case "legality".

Our words are such a simple way to communicate but they are the private possessions of each of us and should be respected. When an author sits down to place their knowledge, emotions, feelings, thoughts, ideas, research, observations etc, on paper he or she does so with the intent to share those with others, but with that also come the expectation that if those words are used by another that the original author will recieve credit. To not do so is disrespectful and "plagiarism". It is a "theft" like any other regardless of the reason.

Now don't get me wrong here I am not trying to be the "english cop" so to speak but rather shed some light on something I have seen many times here as well as other places on the web. It is pervasive to say the least and something we are all guilty of at some point. Simply placing quote marks is fine in most cases but the thing that I think bothers me most is when I see entire articles written by someone else being posted and many time containing injected thoughts in a manner that suggest that the poster is the original author of the entire artical. There is either no references or limited references in the form of a hyper-link or statement such as " I read this" to establish the idea to the new readers that this is not a work of this indivudual, but someone else. This in my view is an intentional and deliberate attempt at "plagiarism" and makes me very leary of the motives of the one sharing the information, making it hard to accept the intent.

It really takes little time to site the publication, author and date of the information your sharing and should be viewed as a necessary part of the process. It not only identifies the original work but provides further information for the reader to continue reading on the topic discussed should it be one of interest to them. Its kind of like a "footprint" in that it directs one to the original source(s) and why would you not want to do that for your readers if you yourself found merit in what your sharing?

Before I close this let me share one final thought. Plagiarism, is not just the unsited verbatum duplication of anothers words, but also "the close immation of the words or thoughts of another author, used as your own" [as defined by the Unabridged Dictionary (v 1.1) ]. In some instances actual permission is needed to reproduce something, but for the most part it is public domain and meant to be shared, but that does not ever trump "plagiarism".

Just a little something that interested me.

EvilBlonde's Blog

Plagiarism in the Cyber World

EvilBlonde

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