Plagiarism - Do You Copy That?

The curious off-black smoky color to the font and section headings with an odd bluish hue alerted the instructor that something was seriously amiss with the student's writing assignment. Upon further investigation, the educator was dismayed to find that the entire student report had been cut and pasted from an article on the Internet. A simple web search revealed the exact source, furnishing the incriminating evidence that the paper had been plagiarized in its entirety. Nurses Announcements Archive Article

In this digital age, plagiarism has never been so easy - and so prevalent. Millennial students often do not realize that lifting words from the internet is cheating. They may feel entitled to take information from web-based sources without any constraint or attribution, since they have grown up in the digital age where copious amounts of information have always been so freely available.

Definition

Plagiarism is defined as the "unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work" ("plagiarism," n.d.). Plagiarism is a form of cheating, dishonesty, and theft - literary theft. The writer has assumed ownership of the original thoughts, language, and material of another, without properly documenting the source.

Plagiarism includes such deliberate acts as

  • Buying or borrowing another person's paper
  • Hiring another person to write an assignment
  • Cutting and pasting material without proper citation

Accidental plagiarism, on the other hand, is unintentional and often involves sloppy research practices with improper or deficient reference citations. Students need to be aware that ignorance of proper citation methods does not excuse the act of plagiarism.

Most, if not all, learning institutions have an academic dishonesty policy that defines and addresses plagiarism and spells out its consequences. The consequences of plagiarism can be grave, including academic warnings, expulsion, and a marred scholastic record that can negatively affect one's career opportunities throughout life.

Best practices in academic writing require extensive research, analysis, and synthesis of others' ideas, with careful and meticulous citation of sources. The writer builds upon others' works, while offering a significant original revision, improvement, or scholarly contribution.

Clues for educators to plagiarism in written assignments include odd shades, fonts, and formatting of text, errant footnotes, and noticeable variations in writing styles within the same paper. Pasting a few suspect sentences into a mega-search engine such as dogpile.com will often yield instantaneous results. Educators can also use sophisticated software such as turnitin and dupli checker.

References

Avoiding plagiarism

Defining and avoiding plagiarism: the wpa statement on best practices

Plagiarism. (n.d.). dictionary.com unabridged. Retrieved from dictionary.com website: Plagiarism | Define Plagiarism at Dictionary.com

Plagiarism lines blur for students in digital age

Proper Citation

A fellow graduate student submitted very well written paragraphs for her part of a group project. We made it clear that submissions to the group "editor" were to be finished material and ready to be pasted right into our paper. So imagine our dismay when we realized they were paragraph long parts cut and pasted directly from emedicine.com! When we gently confronted her about this, she insisted this was her writing "style" and we were just nitpicking! A professor fortunately intervened for us, but it was still a kick in the gut when we learned that all of her previous submissions in the grad school program (we were a year into the program) could not be re-assessed for plagiarism. So we had done all of our work honestly and she had cut and pasted her way through the NP program. It seriously made me ill.

Specializes in Gerontological, cardiac, med-surg, peds.

The opening paragraph in my blog entry is a true story... it happened to me in a class I was teaching this summer as an adjunct (not at my regular college of nursing). Besides this one very blatant case, I uncovered two others who were cutting and pasting in their papers and submitting the work as their own. And this was out of a class of ~ 20 students!

with that 1k i would have did my own work then after getting my well deserved "A", went on a vacation to celebrate. that is really pathetic...

Specializes in LTC, HomeCare.

The BSN program I started just over a week ago, the professors made it VERY clear on day 1 that every paper, long or short had to be submitted to turnitin.com before giving it to the professor. However this wasn't the case where I graduated with AAS in Nursing. Every School should mandate that. It isn't fair to the people that spend hours doing papers (such as myself who is doing one right now :mad:)

Millennial students often do not realize that lifting words from the Internet is cheating. They may feel entitled to take information from web-based sources without any constraint or attribution, since they have grown up in the digital age where copious amounts of information have always been so freely available.

This is the only part of the post that I disagree with - I'm at the older end of the 'millennials', but back in college I had professors who clearly explained what constituted plagiarism from Day One (and in high school as this internet thing started gaining popularity). What I have seen, on many occasions, however, are students who took advantage of the 'Oh, I thought it was OK' argument to get out of punishment for academic integrity infractions. They know it's wrong. They actively sought out papers on the internet to turn in as their own.

Now, there's nothing wrong with properly citing an internet source (except Wikipedia, but that's another issue) as if it were traditional media, but I can't imagine ever meeting the student who had absolutely no idea that if it wasn't theirs they couldn't use it without properly citing it.

dudette10 - sounds like a good solution. I used the same method successfully as an undergrad. There's no reason one should be penalized for having a writing style or certain interests.

Specializes in psych, addictions, hospice, education.

Absolutely, give your instructor the heads-up. It's better to tell him/her before than have to explain afterwards.

Several years ago, I gave my students a copy of something I had written, as an example of how their paper should flow. They didn't know it was my paper. Imagine my surprise when one of them turned in a paper using large amounts of my work as if it was hers. Needless to say, she and I had a long talk, and she re-wrote her paper...

Specializes in school nursing, ortho, trauma.

it's bad enough to plagarize... but then to be too dumb to cover your tracks.... VickyRN great blog!

I dislike Turnitin for the very reason that they are building their vast database with my original works, and using their large numbers of papers as a selling point. I NEVER authorized any such thing directly with Turnitin, nor does my college have any paperwork or releases signed by me authorizing the college to utilize Turnitin using my papers. But my anger at cheaters overrides the bad taste in my mouth left by my professors using Turnitin.

I laugh at the beginning of each semester, as professor after professor outlines the college's zero-tolerance on cheating, and the professors own feelings on cheating. I scoff as the professor discusses the concept that nursing school cheater= killer in the field. I have personally turned in cheaters, signed statements, and had discussions with professors about cheating students. Not a single student has ever recieved a failing grade, or has been kicked out of a class, or out of the program.

So I am ever more disgusted with the fact that Turnitin profits while students continue to cheat, and nothing ever changes. And I am suspicious of the people I got to school with, and wonder if they'll be my coworker, or my family members nurse one day.

For the poster that mentioned Craigslist..yikes! I never would have thought about stuff like that.

Specializes in Cardiology and ER Nursing.

Sometimes it's very hard to avoid plagiarism particularly when writing medical papers, because we all speak in relatively the same manner, they way one person conveys something will be the same way I or many other people would say it. This makes it incredibly hard to paraphrase things. Oftentimes I'll just use a direct quote or if it's particularly long my good friend the block quote, then try and tie my ideas and points around them. As far as some of the plagiarism mentioned in several posts, with people just copying text word for word from the internet, that is just stupid. It's one thing to cheat, it's another thing to just be stupid about it. Although with all the effort someone would have to go through to effectively "cheat" they would be better off just doing the work themselves. Honesty is generally the best approach, except when asked "does this dress make me look fat?":clown:

I dislike Turnitin for the very reason that they are building their vast database with my original works, and using their large numbers of papers as a selling point. I NEVER authorized any such thing directly with Turnitin, nor does my college have any paperwork or releases signed by me authorizing the college to utilize Turnitin using my papers. But my anger at cheaters overrides the bad taste in my mouth left by my professors using Turnitin.

Did I miss something? What happened with your experience with turnitin.com?? I am currently in ENG101 that requires us to use it. My next assignment will be the first time using turnitin.

Amber

Turnitin is a database of papers written by students (in HS and College I know for sure), as well as other works accessible on the internet. A selling point for the company is that they have such a vast database. If you write a paper for a class, and turn it in to your professor, they then submit it to Turnitin (or you might do it yourself). The program scans your paper, and gives you a score based on the words and phrases you wrote. The technology is similar to that of Google. It reads the words typed, and matches it with other words and phrases in either identical order, or a very close approximation. The higher the score, the more your paper matches other works in their database. A score of 100% means your paper is a straight up copy of another. The lower your score, the less your paper resembles anything in their database. The works that match yours will have a link, and references, so you can see what your paper is matched against. I personally usually score in the low teens, but have gotten as high as a 30% (on an opinion paper, with no quotes and no references of all things!)- so bear in mind that even if you are honest you may still have some matches. Each professor or school may have different standards; some say anything more than 35% is a copy, others may go higher or lower.

And if you think about the English language,the recurrence of words and phrases in certain order and the fact that humans are all basically creatures of habit, odds are strongly in favor of matches. As another poster already said, medical papers (and any other specialty I would say) will have a higher rating of being similar, as there are only so many ways to describe the etiology and physiology of coagulation or wound healing for example.

My personal objection is that every time I submit a paper to Turnitin, it builds their database. Okay, so maybe 1-5 papers per class each semster might not seem like a big deal, but I worked on those papers, did the research, did the writing and editing and as far as I'm concerned they are my intellectual property. I have never signed any releases allowing my personal property to be used for their financial gain. Each semester I sign a release to allow photographs of myslef to be taken and used for the college brochures -never happened, not model material I guess ;) but nothing for Turnitin. Now, as a student at a school that uses Turnitin, my very paying of tuition and agreeing to abide by the terms of the college may have negated any rights I have in that regard. I have yet to see any such documentation and specific rules or regs mentioning this type of technology. I have read my handbook cover to cover, and asked various admin. personnel, and still cannot get a clear answer on my rights. Obviously, if I objected so strongly, I could decline to utilize Turnitin, but I then run the risk and consequences of failing the course or being dropped from the program for not completing an assignment.

Of course, this whole thing maks me hate cheaters even more. Thanks jerks, for creating an entire industry designed to catch your sorry selves red-handed. :(

If anyone has a better description, or feels differently than I, I'd love to hear it. I've been disgusted about this for years, and am open to having my mind changed.