Apart from juggling between assignments' datelines, another issue that always concerns me is the issue of plagiarism. Plagiarism has been taken seriously by most education providers because as explained by University of Birmingham (n.d.), plagiarism is unethical because it constitutes as a form of misconduct.
With the free access to 'digitized information', it is hard to prevent plagiarism from being escalated further (Smith 2008). At such, Walden (cited by Pecorari 2008) mentioned that such situation has alarmed education providers to be sterner in preventing plagiarism. Hence, plagiarism detecting software such as Turnitin has been widely used in the education field.
(Image source: Turnitin 2011)
Surprisingly, plagiarism is also being highly stressed by professionals in the publishing field. On 2nd March 2011, BBC Magazine (2011) has released an article, 'Plagiarism: The Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V boom', which reported that the German defence minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has resigned from his position as he was found plagiarizing his doctoral thesis. Moreover, the article also highlighted that the London School of Economics is currently investigating Saif al-Islam's (son of Colonel Gaddafi) PhD thesis for plagiarism offense.
Apparently, even newspaper outlets practice unethical publishing. In one of Media Watch (2010)'s episodes, it was reported that The Australian has been found plagiarizing one of ABC News' news article. Such plagiarism act has caused The Australian to release a public apology and the in-charged copy editor has been reprimanded.
Principles of Ethical Publishing in the International Journal of Cardiology have clearly outlined 7 principles in guiding publishers to practice the act of ethical publishing (Coats 2009). Generally, all of the policies prohibit publishers to use other authors' materials (even self materials from prior work) without using proper citation and consent.
Additionally, in the 36th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conferences, it was argued that one of the causes that lead to more plagiarism cases is because of the differences of how each culture within a community define what plagiarism really is (Gotterban, Miller and Impagliazzo 2006).
With that in mind, Gotterban, Miller and Impagliazzo (2006) added that as compared to the implementation of ethical publishing principles, the existence of strong bodies or organizations that is against the practices of plagiarism through the implementation of legal laws and actions would be a better choice to curb plagiarism.
Well, I have to agree with that because through the existence of such said organizations, at least publishers will have to rethink again when they would want to put the "magic of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V" into practice.
Well, I have to agree with that because through the existence of such said organizations, at least publishers will have to rethink again when they would want to put the "magic of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V" into practice.
References
BBC Magazine 2011, Plagiarism: The Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V boom, viewed 9th June 2011, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12613617>.
Coats, AJS 2006, ‘Ethical authorship and publishing’, International Journal of Cardiology, vol. 131, no. 2, pp. 149-150.
Media Watch 2010, Copy-Cat Copy-Editor, viewed 9th June 2011, <http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s2901878.htm>.
Pecorari, D 2008, Academic Writing and Plagiarism: A Linguistic Analysis, viewed 8th June 2011, <http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=404953§ioncode=26>.
Smith, WS 2008, Plagiarism, the Internet, and Student Learning: Improving Academic Integrity, Routledge, New York.
University of Birmingham n.d., Guidance Notes on Plagiarism, viewed 9th June 2011, <http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/internal/students/plagiarism.htm>.
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