“Originality is Undetected Plagiarism”

William inge, 2022

According to the University of Oxford, plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgment. Plagiarism may be intentional or reckless, or unintentional. Personally, I believe that we all have an idea about plagiarism. However, we are not that educated and we all have misconceptions about what constitutes plagiarism. I, myself, am guilty of doing this kind of practice because I think that I only need citations for direct quotations, not realizing that I also need citations for information that I summarize or paraphrase.

Moreover, having this question in mind “Why do students still break the rules of plagiarism?”, I think of other reasons besides having misconceptions about what constitutes plagiarism and not being well explained in school. I think most of us still practice plagiarism because we don’t believe in ourselves, we are scared of failure, and we are scared of taking risks in our own work. Second, admit it or not, most of us have poor time-management skills and we may plan poorly for the time and effort required for research-based writing, and believe we have no choice but to plagiarize. We also tend to view the course, the assignment, the conventions of academic documentation, or the consequences of cheating as unimportant. We have this kind of belief that we will not get caught and if we will, the weight of punishment is not that strong. Most teachers enforce the rule of plagiarism and they are abiding by the rules. They fail the students and give them a lower grade, but the punishments are not that serious. Some teachers let it pass and just remind their students not to do it again. I guess these are some of the reasons why students still break the rules of plagiarism. They have become used to the practice of doing it all over again, they do not understand what plagiarism truly means, and they are not threatened by the consequences anymore.

In addition, I think personal reasons are not the only contribution to why people plagiarized. I think some teachers are also the ones pushing students to do it. Besides, not having strict punishments for plagiarism, teachers may also present students with assignments so generic or unparticularized that students may believe they are justified in looking for canned responses.

With all of these, I think it is really a matter of choice in how we value ethical work as a student or as an individual. We may not be threatened anymore about the consequences that will occur when we plagiarized but I hope we value honesty and we start believing in ourselves and our work. If we get ideas from others, we should then not forget to acknowledge them. The change starts within us.

References:

Xplore. (n.d.). William Inge quotes. BrainyQuote. Retrieved March 4, 2022, from https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/william_inge_137059

Plagiarism. University of Oxford. (n.d.). Retrieved March 4, 2022, from https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism

Enago Academy. (2021, October 25). How to avoid plagiarism in research papers (part 1). Enago Academy. Retrieved April 3, 2022, from https://www.enago.com/academy/how-to-avoid-plagiarism-in-research-papers/