How Plagiarism Violations Occur - Assignment Example

Although research is consistent that the term “plagiarism” is open to diverse definitions and interpretations (Gullifer & Tyson, 2014), it is defined in this paper as a form of academic theft that ensues when individuals attempt to take the words and thoughts of other people and pass them as their own without acknowledging the originators of the work or citing the sources that have been used (Jones, 2011; Roig, n.d.). Plagiarism may be intentional or unintentional, meaning that some students may engage in plagiarism through willful means (e.g., copy-pasting other people’s work or stealing the work of other students), while others fall into the trap through unintended means (e.g., poor paraphrasing and omitting quotation marks when copying directly).

Gullifer and Tyson (2014) argue that it is important for academic institutions to distinguish plagiarism “from inadequate and/or inappropriate attempts to acknowledge the words, works or ideas of someone else, as for example when a student makes a genuine attempt to reference their work, but has very poor referencing skills” (p. 1204). This assertion underscores the important role that instructors have to play in ensuring that their students have adequate knowledge of various writing and referencing styles.

 Most students fall into the plagiarism trap by using a few words to alter an original source and then passing the resulting sentence, idea, or phrase as the original. Some students are also yet to develop the understanding that sources searched from the Internet must be cited and acknowledged comprehensively as they do with books and other scholarly readings (Gullifer & Tyson, 2014). Other easy ways of falling into the plagiarism trap include (1) failure to acknowledge paraphrased text, (2) lack of familiarity with writing conventions when quoting and paraphrasing, (3) inadequate paraphrasing, (4) copy-pasting, and (5) failure to include quotation marks when using the exact words of other people (Jones, 2011).

Students who also purchase papers from the Internet and pass them as their own are also considered to have engaged in plagiarism if they fail to acknowledge the authors or sources of such papers.