Plagiarism in Research Papers (Essay Sample)

Plagiarism in Research Papers
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Introduction
Plagiarism is the act of presenting another individual’s words, ideas, or intellectual property as one’s own without giving credit to the owner through quotation or citation (University of Alberta 2014). Plagiarism is a thorn to education thus most universities take it as a very serious offence which leads to people getting expelled from the university with their academic certificates citing qualifications being revoked. However, even with students knowing that integrity in academics is the cornerstone of teaching, research, and learning they still can fall prey to the act if not careful when gathering information on given subject of interest in a research paper.
For starters, a researcher can be poor in writing while lacking the needed research skills to gather information from journal articles available in search databases, library catalogue, or other sources (University of Alberta, 2014). The confusion and inability in the student’s part to distinguish between paraphrased text and plagiarized text leads most students to unintentional plagiarism which comes as a result of incorrect source citing. Sometimes students lack the ability to critically evaluate sources available in the internet resulting to low quality research process and writing output. Last but not least, some researchers can be careless in their note taking phase leading to a confusion when trying to distinguish between their own material and what they obtained from other sources thus lack the ability to make an informed decision on when to do a direct quotation and when to paraphrase. Secondly, inability to understand key concepts such as believing that plagiarism as an act involving only written text and disregarding the fact that theft or ignoring to give credit to an idea’s owner is also an act of plagiarism (University of Alberta, 2014). Thirdly, family, jobs, and scholarship competition can be a source of external pressure on individuals leading to a disregard to ethics and honesty since to such students only the grades matter and thus copying an already certified article seems as a better easy way to get those high grades. Another reason is always the mismanagement of time and poor organizational skills leaving researchers overwhelmed by large tasks. Last but not least, depending on where a researcher comes from his/her attitude towards plagiarism can be heavily influenced by his/her culture. For example, most Asian students find it difficult to comprehend the concept of acknowledging the ideas and language of others (University of Alberta, 2014).
Cases of plagiarism go from academic print outs and articles to journalists’ research papers and even school memos. For example, German’s former defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was forced to resign on 1St March, 2011 after his doctoral degree was revoked by Universitat Bayreuth due to some parts in his paper being plagiarized (Wecker 2012). New York Times once rising star Jayson Blair a journalist and reporter was discovered in 2003 for plagiarizing "at least 36 of his 76 articles" according to Jonathan Bailey and he was forced to resign (Bailey 2012). Another example was the first memo sent via email by Jaime Moody, Dorchester’s Lilla G. Fredrick Pilot Middle School new principal to her staff as a way of inspiring them to learn from each other and take risks so as to be successful. The memo was found to be a word for word plagiarism of the Forbes magazine column "Why Getting Comfortable with Discomfort is Crucial to Success" where her memo of two pages consumed a large portion of the column but not a single acknowledgement was given to Forbes. Questions were raised by some teachers and it is in that moment one skeptic chose to paste a portion of the memo into Google to see if it was the principal’s original writing and that’s when Forbes column popped up and the principal was busted and due to her action the she was forced to apologize and was lucky to be forgiven (Vaznis 2013).
Every hurdle has a bypass and only through critical evaluation can the open eye note it. Therefore, a researcher should try and learn the techniques that helps one evade plagiarism. For example, paraphrasing which is the art of reading the found information relevant to a researcher’s paper and expressing it in the person’s own words according to his/her comprehension. If the writer has to quote the given text as it is presented then he/she should make use of quotation marks. Another technique is citing by either utilizing the given formatting guidelines such as APA, Chicago, Oxford, MLA, and many more (WriteCheck 2014). Citing is simple and easy to execute since one needs to entail author(s) name and publication date or other relevant information. However, improper citation can lead to plagiarism. Quoting is another technique a researcher can use to evade plagiarism. Taking into account that no man likes being misquoted it is wise to quote a source exactly as it postulates and appears (WriteCheck 2014). At times one can opt to cite quotes, although confusing quote citing is very different from paraphrased material citing since it involves adding a paragraph...