Plagiarism And Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity As defined in the dictionary, plagiarism is “to take someone else’s ideas, words, etc. and use them as one’s own”. Just like the source of this definition is mentioned here, it is very important for everyone to quote the original sources of any material they use for their own reports, essays or any piece of writing. If they fail to do so, then it will be termed as “plagiarism”. Previously students used to copy paragraphs from a range of scholarly journals or books, which was very time consuming. However, since the last few years, with the increasing popularity of the Internet, plagiarism has become easier for the students but a grave matter for the college and university teachers and professors. (Susan, 2004) It has been witnessed that just by clicking a few links on the internet websites, students come up with brilliant essays that have been cut and pasted within a couple of minutes. The teachers cannot often trace the source of the material and end up giving undeserving credit to the student for someone else’s work. Although, the act of plagiarism is carried out by the professional people as well, emphasis should be given on the college going students so that they should know the consequences of such an act at the initial years of their learning process. The teachers should educate the young minds about plagiarism, both what it is and the penalties about it. (Patrick, 2005) Always remind the students the right ethical behavior they need to have in every field of life. They should ask the students to mention their work procedure if they carried out a research at the end of each paper they submit. If they have used some information from another source as it is, they should include quotation marks and inform th...

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...g the sources of materials in bibliographies or identifying the text materials used within the document. Authors must document each instance in which another's words or ideas are used. Bibliographies or reference pages, in-text documentation, and sources cited usually require Turabian (a documentation style used in theses, dissertations and term papers), MLA or APA-style documentation, Any of these styles is a good way to cite sources used and to avoid plagiarism. References Susan C. Thomson. St. (2004). Amid wave of cheating, universities push `academic integrity' Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) Patrick Drinan (2005). Loyalty, Learning, & Academic Integrity. Liberal Education, Vol. 85 Issue 1, p28, 6p, 2bw; Robin. Wilson, (2006). Colleges Urged to Better Define Academic Integrity and to Stress Its Importance. Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 46 Issue 8, pA18, and 1/3p;