About Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the unlawful use of another person’s ideas or research work without accrediting the owner. It is considered to be a form of intellectual property theft, and has sanctions formulated against it. This is because it reduces the chances of the real owner of a piece of intellectual property benefiting from it. The culprit may be seeking to increase individual reputation at the expense of the real owner of the intellectual piece.

Due to its nature, plagiarism is most likely to occur in two major fields: the academic and the journalistic. In the academic field, the plagiarists may be students seeking an easy way of doing their term papers. It could also be professors or lecturers trying to avoid the tedious learning curves of academia. Either way, when found out, the culprits are liable to face up to academic censure. In journalism, plagiarists can be sanctioned with anything from a mere suspension to a termination of their professions.

With the advent of the internet, plagiarism became much easier – a simple copy and paste process. But simultaneously, anti-plagiarism entities upped their game, using the same internet conveniences to hinder this vice. Nowadays, there are many internet tools used to detect plagiarism. Google is probably the most well known among these. A major search engine, Google’s vast potentials lie in its in-text search capabilities. This means that not only does Google search headings, but it also searches within web pages for words or strings of words. Hence a plagiarized piece of work having some unique phrases can easily be picked up using Google.

There are other online soft wares and sites that are used against plagiarism. The site Turnitin.com is widely recognized in this respect. Other private companies include Word Check Systems, iParadigms, and CaNexus.com. All of these use word processing soft wares, which basically divide long documents into fragments, which can then be searched across a wide online database. In this way, some companies boast of the capability to check documents against a billion other “high risk” WebPages.

With time, governments themselves are stepping in to curb this plagiarism vice. The Federal Policy on Research Misconduct, put in place by the Federal Office of Science and Technology, provides a legal recourse for individuals and institutions caught with such misdemeanors. Institutions thus found guilty may have to deal with a lack of grant funding from the government. Individuals can be charged with civil or criminal fraud.

From a personal point of view, plagiarism is one of the worst crimes that anyone can commit. Born mostly out of sheer laziness, the vice ultimately makes everyone a loser. The real owner of a particular idea or thought never gets the credit he or she deserves, and any associated royalties. Years of research can be laid bare by one unscrupulous plagiarist. At the same time, the plagiarist loses out on the chance to create new material and add to the overall body of knowledge. And while it may feel like a quick fix solution to deadlines in the short run, in the long run, the risks associated with plagiarism are simply not worth it.

The insidious stealth of plagiarism makes it the ultimate crime. More often than not, the real owner of the intellectual property does not realize the loss until too late, and even then, may be at a loss on what recourse to take. The prevailing sanctions against the vice are mostly not effective enough, and need reworking to match up with the seriousness of the crime.