Strategies in Order to Avoid Plagiarism - Assignment Example

Introduction Plagiarism is a fraud, as it would make somebody to claim other’s works in order to give credit to a wrong author (Dutton, 2012). Therefore, one could potentially consider plagiarism as an academic crime. For this reason, anyone that will be caught plagiarizing would receive substantial retribution depending on the degree of infraction associated with plagiarism. At some point, one could therefore include the idea about intellectual property rights. This is based on the legal context of plagiarism, but there are other important thoughts one should be able to understand about it. For instance, based on the above definition, it is also implied that plagiarism could be a way to hold back people’s potential to exercise their creativity and personal ideas on certain things, because in the end, there would only be relevant duplications of concepts as an upshot of not significantly citing the right author or taking others’ words as own. For this reason, plagiarism could stand as an activity limiting the potential of a person to think of his own ideas and concepts on certain issues for instance. This activity should therefore degrade academic quality, so it is important to consider vital strategies in order to prevent somebody from plagiarizing. Below are some of the strategies in order to avoid plagiarism. Three strategies to avoid plagiarism Citing or attributing the reference source is one important strategy to avoid plagiarism (EC-Council, 2009). By attributing the reference source, a writer or speaker is giving credit to a person or article as the starting place of corresponding ideas. It is not good to consider an idea and regard it with full ownership if somebody already had it owned in the first place. In order to consider that idea without any problem, attributing the source is one of the most relevant actions a writer or speaker could apply. The good thing about doing this is not only to enhance or establish the credibility of a point, but to ensure that to give credit to the right person is exercised. This is also a form of establishing good academic discipline, as it primarily deals with some ethical considerations. Not only that, referring to the source is an activity that will ensure integrity of a writer or speaker, as it would not only back up potential points, but above all, remarkable academic and intellectual reputation. So in order to achieve this, it is good to go back to the basic and employ substantial effort to cite authors and other related sources of some important ideas. In the age of advanced technology, it is now easy to detect whether a piece of article is a plagiarized output. There are some available online tools or software that could be used in order to identify similarity of used words or information. Such are the common tools used in various academic institutions. In order to prevent from having similar outputs, one should therefore understand how these online tools work. In the case of some of these tools, the number or percentage of similar words is usually taken into account. Thus, when there is higher number of percentage of proximity, there is therefore superior indication of actual plagiarism. At this point, another potential strategy that could be used in order to prevent plagiarism involves either paraphrasing or rephrasing (Tensen, 2012). This strategy would also be effective when one has to properly document the source (Van Blerkom, 2009). At some certain level, one is not limited to combine these two. In fact, this for instance would further enhance the writing skills of the writer, but above all, there is great consideration of warding off high value of similarity between the recent and existing outputs. However, in this strategy it would still be effective to attribute the source. Thus, paraphrasing or rephrasing plus citing the source would ensure a free-plagiarized output. Another important strategy to prevent plagiarism is to consider summarizing the point of the source (Behrens & Rosen, 2000). There are remarkable advantages in summarizing the actual information obtained from the source. To cite an instance, these would include the ability of the writers to enhance their writing skills. They could express ideas using their own words based on the information coming from the source. It is like reading the whole book and in the end explaining in detail using personal words the entire thought. It is also like watching a movie film and in brief words, trying to explain in detail the whole idea or information of the movie film. Thus, summarizing is a way of making it simple and easy to express information or thought. However, above all probable advantages, it is clear that plagiarism is ultimately put off when somebody tries to consider summarizing of information. When one summarizes an article, there is considerable time to prevent actual copying of information, thoughts or ideas verbatim. However, this strategy on the other hand does not totally ensure that one is still free from plagiarism. This strategy only helps prevent plagiarism, but there is still a need to integrate with it the first strategy which is appropriately citing the source. Conclusion There might be probable ideas concerning plagiarism based on what certain perspectives it has to be taken into account. However, it is clear that there is something wrong with it that there must be a need to consider some important strategies to prevent someone from plagiarizing. There are many probable strategies that one could potentially used, but as stated in this article, there are three important approaches in order to make sure that an output, article or speech is not a copy of an existing academic works or intellectual property. Based on the above discussion, attributing the source is a significant strategy that could potentially be integrated with other strategies. For this reason, it is important to consider that to credit the right source is a remarkable strategy in order to prevent academic fraud associated with plagiarism. Along with this strategy, it is also important to combine paraphrasing or rephrasing and summarizing in order to guarantee that the source is not only properly attributed, but to prevent economic fraud by taking ideas, concepts or thoughts verbatim. References Behrens, L., & Rosen, L. J. (2000). Writing and reading across the curriculum (7th ed.). New York, NY: Addison Wesley Longman. Dutton, D. (2012). Forgery and plagiarism. Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, 331-338. EC-Council (2009). Computer forensics: Investigating network intrusions and cybercrime. Clifton Park, NY: Cengage Learning. Tensen, B. L. (2012). Research strategies for a digital age (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Van Blerkom, D. L. (2009). Orientation to college learning (6th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. Read More