PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism has many definitions. It can be referred to as a form of corruption or a form of appropriation theft. Plagiarism is the act of copying another person’s work and reproducing it as one’s own.
Plagiarism in the early years it was not considered as a criminal act especially in art where it was a part of the”creative” process. This was later classified as immoral and a lack of originality in the 18th century.
There are many forms of plagiarism depending on the level one is. It is not limited to only students but also professionals. There is plagiarism where one copies a whole text from a given source and reproduces it in his work. It also takes the form where one takes an expression only and adds it to his work. There is a more advanced form where one takes a sentence and changes the words by placing synonyms and reproducing it. Plagiarism also takes shape were one company copies ideas and strategies from other institutions and adopt them as their own without acknowledging the pioneers of the concepts. There is also journalism plagiarism where a journalist does not recognize the source of his/her information.
Plagiarism has many causes. It can be blamed on the person actually doing the act or employers, teachers or even lecturers. Some of the major causes are laziness where one party does not want to invest time in the work he or she has been given to do or perform. It can also be attributed to carelessness and the lack of creativity-where people now do not want to discover new things but use the pre-existing ones. But, the major cause is the technological advancements that have come to play today. There was a time when people would go to libraries to search through published journals, books and encyclopedias. Nowadays, with computers, internet and internet enabled mobile phones and other portable devices people just ”surf” for information without judging their values or truthfulness.
Consequences of plagiarism vary from one field to another. In teaching institution it is divided into three mainly the student, the teaching stuff and research team. For the student it may be a low grade, failure in the unit or degree depending on the number of times he/she has committed the offence, and on extreme cases suspension or expulsion. To the teaching stuff suspension or termination of contract, loss of integrity and credibility. The last point also applies to researcher or loss of financiering. In journalism the journalist may lose credibility and the firm’s reputation may be damaged.
Ways or avoiding plagiarism are being original, acknowledging the source by citing the source and using information that is for public use or domain.
There are many ways of controlling plagiarism. One can use citations. This is where on recognizes the origin of his information or the person responsible e.g. from the text book “A MAN OF THE PEOPLE” written by Chinua Achebe. For big corporation to control the theft of the ideas and strategies they buying copyright for the ideas. This prevents theft due to the legal consequences tied to breaching these rights. To curb plagiarism in teaching institutions the teaching stuff can employ the help of plagiarism detection software. This tends to detect “stolen” information in ones work.
