User:SolidBill/Plagiarism

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For other uses, see Plagiarism (disambiguation).

For Wikipedia policies concerning plagiarism, see Plagiarism and Copyright violations.

Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work. Although precise definitions vary, depending on the institution, such representations are generally considered to violate academic integrity and journalistic ethics as well as social norms of learning, teaching, research, fairness, respect, and responsibility in many cultures. It is subject to sanctions such as penalties, suspension, expulsion from school or work, substantial fines, and even imprisonment.

Plagiarism is typically not in itself a crime, but like counterfeiting, fraud can be punished in a court for prejudices caused by copyright infringement, violation of moral rights, or torts. In academia and in industry, it is a serious ethical offense. Plagiarism can appear to look different in certain academic fields, which will be discussed in this article. Plagiarism and copyright infringement overlap to a considerable extent, but they are not equivalent concepts, and many types of plagiarism do not constitute copyright infringement, which is defined by copyright law and may be adjudicated on by courts.

Not all countries hold the same beliefs about personal ownership of language or ideas. Although some, such as India and Poland, consider plagiarism to be a crime liable for imprisonment, in other countries the reiteration of another professional's work can be a sign of respect or flattery. In East Asian countries, sometimes plagiarism is viewed as a form of imitation rather than the theft of intellectual property. Students who move to the United States and other Western countries from countries where plagiarism is not frowned upon may find the transition difficult.

This article will first explicate the etymology and the evolution of plagiarism, and how it has evolved more over the internet. Next, plagiarism will be meticulously analyzed in academia, journalism, science, legal courts, the arts and the military. The morality and when plagiarism is acceptable to use will be outlined. Lastly, this article will analyze how plagiarism can threaten the professional relationship and emotional equilibrium between a student and instructor.

Etymology and evolution of plagiarism [edit]
In the 1st century, the use of the Latin word "plagiarius" (literally "kidnapper") to denote stealing someone else's creative work was pioneered by the Roman poet Martial, who complained that another poet had "kidnapped his verses". Plagiary, a derivative of plagiarus, was introduced into English in 1601 by dramatist Ben Jonson during the Jacobean Era to describe someone guilty for literary theft. The derived form plagiarism was introduced into English around 1620. The Latin plagiārius, "kidnapper", and plagium, "kidnapping", have the root plaga ("snare", "net"), based on the Indo-European root *-plak, "to weave" (seen for instance in Greek plekein, Bulgarian "плета" pleta, and Latin plectere, all meaning "to weave").

It is frequently claimed that people in antiquity had no concept of plagiarism, or at least did not condemn it, and it only came to be seen as immoral much later, anywhere from the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th century to the Romantic movement in the 18th century. Although people in antiquity found detecting plagiarism difficult due to the paucity of literate persons as well as long travel times, there are a considerable number of pre-Enlightenment authors, who accused others of plagiarism and considered it distasteful and scandalous, including the respected historians Polybius and Pliny the Elder. The 3rd century Greek work Lives of the Eminent Philosophers mentions that Heraclides Ponticus was accused of plagiarizing (κλέψαντα αὐτὸν) a treatise on Heliod and Homer. In Vitruvius's 7th book, he acknowledged his debt to earlier writers and attributed them. He also passed a strong condemnation of plagiarism: "Earlier writers deserve our thanks, those, on the contrary, deserve our reproaches, who steal the writings of such men and publish them as their own. Those, who depend in their writings, not on their own ideas, but who enviously do wrong to the works of others and boast of it, deserve not merely to be blamed, but to be sentenced to actual punishment for their wicked course of life." Vitruvius went on to claim that "such things did not pass without strict chastisement". He recounted a story where the well-read Aristophanes of Byzantium judged a poetry competition. Aristophanes caught most of the contestants plagiarizing others' poems as their own. The king ordered the plagiarizers to confess that they were thieves, and they were condemned to disgrace. Although the story may be apocryphal, it shows that Vitruvius personally considered plagiarism reprehensible.

Plagiarism continued to evolve with the rise of print culture and inability to catch each instance, and also relaxed morality towards it. It was more convenient for writers to plagiarize another's work rather than having hypervigilance towards the act. With the rise of the internet, plagiarism has become a cancer in academia, science, and other fields. For instructors and those in authority, it is difficult for them to catch each instance of plagiarism because they have to use their time and funds to catch plagiarists. Some universities have resorted to asking their state to pass bills prohibiting the creating, buying, and selling of essays. Specifically at Boston University, 8 term paper companies have become illegal for students to use. To combat these methods for plagiarism, detection websites, such as Turnitin.com, help instructors automatically catch plagiarists using the internet database. The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-3 and ChatGPT raised global discussion about the impact of artificial intelligence on writing and plagiarism. Noam Chomsky called ChatGPT “nothing more than high-tech plagiarism”. In contrast, others have proposed that “the essay is dead”, declaring that artificial intelligence will transform academia and society. One scholar of plagiarism, Eaton, proposed the idea of a postplagiarism era, in which human and artificial-intelligence hybrid writing become normal. The impact of artificial intelligence on plagiarism has yet to be fully understood. Ultimately, plagiarism is uncontrollable— institution policies are sometimes not detailed well enough, and instructors often do not facilitate these necessary conversations with their students regarding plagiarism.

Academia[edit]
One form of academic plagiarism involves appropriating a published article and modifying it slightly to avoid suspicion. No universally adopted definition of academic plagiarism exists. However, this section provides several definitions to exemplify the most common characteristics of academic plagiarism. It has been called, "The use of ideas, concepts, words, or structures without appropriately acknowledging the source to benefit in a setting where originality is expected."

This is an abridged version of Teddi Fishman's definition of plagiarism, which proposed five elements characteristic of plagiarism. According to Fishman, plagiarism occurs when someone:


 * Uses words, ideas, or work products
 * Attributable to another identifiable person or source
 * Without attributing the work to the source from which it was obtained
 * In a situation in which there is a legitimate expectation of original authorship
 * In order to obtain some benefit, credit, or gain which need not be monetary

Furthermore, plagiarism is defined differently among institutions of higher learning and universities:


 * At Stanford it is the "use, without giving reasonable and appropriate credit to or acknowledging the author or source, of another person's original work, whether such work is made up of code, formulas, ideas, language, research, strategies, writing or other form".
 * At Yale it is the "... use of another's work, words, or ideas without attribution", which includes "... using a source's language without quoting, using information from a source without attribution, and paraphrasing a source in a form that stays too close to the original".
 * At Princeton it is the "deliberate" use of "someone else's language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source".
 * At Oxford College of Emory University it is the use of "a writer's ideas or phraseology without giving due credit".
 * At Brown it is "... appropriating another person's ideas or words (spoken or written) without attributing those word or ideas to their true source".
 * At The U.S. Naval Academy it is "the use of the words, information, insights, or ideas of another without crediting that person through proper citation".

Plagiarism Affecting the Emotional Equilibrium Between Instructor and Student
Plagiarism has a weighty impact on an instructor's emotional state when one of their students is caught plagiarizing. In a recent study, instructors were interviewed about their feelings when they became aware of a student plagiarizing a class assignment. While most of the instructors felt a sense of empathy, the second most common emotion was anger and betrayal. This empathy stems from the instructor's guilt. Some instructors believed that they failed their class because their student resorted to plagiarism; the reasoning is that classroom environment proved to be too stressful and unwelcoming for a student. Instructors often fail to share the emotions they feel when their students turn to plagiarism. Plagiarism affects the academic identity of the instructor and can even destroy the trust and respect between an instructor and student. If instructors chose to share their feelings about plagiarism with their class, it could potentially stop students from plagiarizing another's work. This could influence a student's morality on the issue.

Factors that justify reuse[edit]
Pamela Samuelson, in 1994, identified several factors she says excuse reuse of one's previously published work, that make it not self-plagiarism. She relates each of these factors specifically to the ethical issue of self-plagiarism, as distinct from the legal issue of fair use of copyright, which she deals with separately. Among other factors that may excuse reuse of previously published material Samuelson lists the following:


 * The previous work must be restated to lay the groundwork for a new contribution in the second work.
 * Portions of the previous work must be repeated to deal with new evidence or arguments.
 * The audience for each work is so different that publishing the same work in different places is necessary to get the message out.
 * The author thinks they said it so well the first time that it makes no sense to say it differently a second time.

Samuelson states she has relied on the "different audience" rationale when attempting to bridge interdisciplinary communities. She refers to writing for different legal and technical communities, saying: "there are often paragraphs or sequences of paragraphs that can be bodily lifted from one article to the other. And, in truth, I lift them." She refers to her own practice of converting "a technical article into a law review article with relatively few changes—adding footnotes and one substantive section" for a different audience.

Samuelson describes misrepresentation as the basis of self-plagiarism. She also states "Although it seems not to have been raised in any of the self-plagiarism cases, copyrights law's fair use defense would likely provide a shield against many potential publisher claims of copyright infringement against authors who reused portions of their previous works."

The close reuse of language, which is considered to be plagiarism and patchwriting, is used often for the public's safety. Here, plagiarism is arguably acceptable because the information is restated in the clearest and most concise way for the public's interest. For example, the language for to prepare meat safely for consumption is repeated by different signs and restaurants.

Factors influencing adults in academia, science, and the military field to plagiarize
Some studies have shown what causes individuals in academia, science, and the military to turn to plagiarism. Although it is deemed to be morally wrong by many, these people choose to plagiarize because the benefits of publishing a revolutionary writing piece outweigh the chance of being caught. In higher education, graduate students report that they turn to plagiarism websites and AI generators in fear of failing a class or earning a lower grade than hoped. Some graduate students make the conscious decision to plagiarize knowing the consequences for doing so because the repercussions for failing an assignment outweigh the former. In the world of science, community members understand that publishing a novel and groundbreaking work can lead to grants, royalties, positions in labs, publication rights, name recognition, a more respected reputation, and consistent citations in future research. All of these benefits of publishing a new article are enticing and therefore can tempt those in the science world to plagiarize another's work. Although a different genre, plagiarism in the military field is just as omnipresent as in academia and science. In the military, there are fewer repercussions for being caught with plagiarism, as many have the mentality that time is precious, and should not be spent on trying to reinvent old ways. Therefore, those in the military are reported to plagiarize more often in hopes of earning higher positions and credibility among peers and authoritative position-holders. Although plagiarism appears to be different in each field, many community members are influenced by these factors.

References[edit]

 * 1) Flowerdew, John (2015-12-01). "Language re-use and the notion of culture: A response to Diane Pecorari's "Plagiarism in second language writing: Is it time to close the case?"". Journal of Second Language Writing. 30: 109–110. doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2015.08.008. ISSN 1060-3743.