Why Plagiarism Is Wrong

To plagiarize is to pass off someone else’s ideas, work, or likeness as one’s own, typically without indicating the source and giving proper credit. Plagiarism can occur in many ways, often accidentally. For example, a student might erroneously transpose words in order to try to paraphrase a source’s ideas rather than summarizing the ideas with new phrasing. Or a student might quote a portion of source material directly and fail to properly indicate that it is a quotation with proper citation, and simply insert a phrase directly into the prose of their own work.
For a more specific example, consider this fictional scenario: A student, Anna, wants to include an idea by an author, Dr. Smith, which would properly be quoted as follows: “word-learning

is a fundamental process of human cognitive development” (Smith, x, pg 12). However, Anna does not leave the information that would indicate Dr. Smith said this, and rephrases the sentence as “word-learning is an important process of cognitive development”. If she did this properly, it would be a citation, but by rephrasing the sentence this way, she is plagiarizing. She has plagiarized both by failing to effectively convey the message in her own, unique wording, and by not citing the source and author. Also, Anna might have put Dr. Smith’s reference on her Works Cited list, but without the in text citation, this is still considered plagiarism.
In this course, plagiarism might be likely in similar such situations, for example by taking data from a study or experiment previously performed by another research team, and then failing to provide full references to the previous study, the research team, author of the paper about the previous study, and specific location of the information within the work in which the information was found.

This is properly avoided with clear, complete in text citation and proper referencing on Works Cited. Another example could be that a student decided to replicate another experiment and presents the purpose with the same wording and style as in the source experiment he is replicating, and does not personalize his own experiment enough to his own needs to distinguish it from the source experiment. This could be properly avoided by considering the original experiment from a different angle or viewpoint and repurposing the experiment so as to create a wholly new purpose or hypothesis. If the student’s experiment is meant to be a perfect replication, the student should rephrase the purpose well and include the reasoning as to why and indicate his plan to take with further experimentation based on the source experiment, as well as all necessary reference information to make it clear that it’s a

duplication.
In my first example, Anna could avoid plagiarism in this instance by rewording her own sentence; instead of taking Dr.

Smith’s phrase nearly word for word, she could say “I believe language development at the level of word comprehension and formation during childhood is crucial to development on the cognitive level…”. This way, Anna uses a style that is uniquely her own in her own wording, and still effectively references the ideas she learned from Dr. Smith. She could go on to say, “…and I believe Dr. Smith shows this well with her data from her ‘Word-Learning Experiment 1’ paper (Smith, X, pg 12)”. Adding this portion about Dr. Smith is a direct way to reference the source into the prose or work, and here, there is also an in-text citation specifying the author and page number. An easy way Anna could avoid accidental plagiarism in the future, is by making notes in her writing as she goes, to help her remember where to place citations, particularly if she does not want to stop in the middle of writing to work on her Works Cited list, however this requires a careful and conservative editorial eye so that no quotes or citations are forgotten; generally, it is best to place citations directly in prose as one is writing. Using lead-ins that directly reference sources and authors is also good practice, though it may not always be desirable depending on the work being presented. Proper rephrasing is an important skill as well, and takes individual practice and understanding; if a

student takes his or her time and reads carefully, then forms their own ideas around a source concept, the student will have an easier time paraphrasing without plagiarizing.