Plagiarism in the 21st Century

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Plagiarism in the 21st Century

The problem of plagiarism has haunted the academic world for centuries. Plagiarism is defined as “taking ideas, passages, etc from an author and presenting them, unacknowledged, as one’s own”.[1] This problem was limited in the past by the lack of materials available to plagiarize, either in libraries, newspapers, magazines, or in academic files of campus organizations. With the birth of the Internet however, the ability to commit fraud through plagiarism has greatly increased. In this electronic age, there are many materials available that promote plagiarism, and many measures being applied to detect it.

Along with the plagiarism materials of the past, there are many new materials arising in this electronic age. An increase in technology allows “rapid, easy dissemination [that] facilitates plagiarism, fabrication of data and tries to obscure authorship or authenticity”.[2] Therefore, the most unrefined assignment can be quickly assembled to appear sophisticated and complete with help from the Internet and word processing programs. The Internet provides a vast set of research for the public to use, but this information is not always used wisely. Journals, magazine articles, and other sources of information on the Internet can be copied into documents without proper citation, and go undetected. This allows a student to claim another’s information as his/her own. This is one example of the piracy people can commit with the aid of the Internet.

Today, one can use the Internet to download research papers from Web sites for free or for a small fee. Some students publish their papers on Web sites for others to view. These papers can often be downloaded by other students an...

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...7) 397.

[2] Marcel C. LaFollette, Stealing Into Print (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) 202.

[3] Ann Lanthrop, Student Cheating and Plagiarism in the Internet Era (Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, 2000) 18-26

[4] Lanthrop 19.

[5] Lanthrop 18.

[6] Lanthrop 18-19.

[7] Lanthrop 30.

[8] Online, Plagiarism.org, 1998-2001, iParadigms Inc, 29 Nov. 2001 <www.plagiarism.org>.

[9] Peter W. Foltz et al, “The Intelligent Essay Assessor: Applications to Educational Technology”, 1999, University of Colorado, 30 Nov. 2001 <imej.wfu.edu/articles/1999/2/index.asp>.

[10] Ann Lanthrop, Student Cheating and Plagiarism in the Internet Era (Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, 2000) 57.

[11] Online, Glatt Plagiarism Self Detection Program, Glatt Plagiarism Services Inc, 30 Nov. 2001 <www.plagiarism.com/self.detect.htm>.

[12] Lanthrop 52.

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