The Concept of Plagiarism

Originality is one of the most important concepts that underpin any form of writing be it scientific or not. It is defined as “the quality or state of being novel or unusual”. In scientific research, originality is a broad term that describes ways to produce new knowledge and new approaches to solve an existing problem rather than summarizing what is already known in a new form. This also includes writing from your own perspective but using other research work to back up your arguments. However, originality is lost when;

• The report of a study is not written by the original researchers
• The methodology of the research is not clearly outlined
• The work of others is used without appropriate acknowledgement etc.

The last point describes an ancient practice known as plagiarism. Plagiarism is widely defined as “passing off or stealing the ideas or words of another as one’s own”. Plagiarism can be traced to the ancient times where great scholars and public figures came under scrutiny for copying the work of others without referencing. For example; Shakespeare was accused of stealing most of his plots from Holinsted. Martin Luther King was also accused of plagiarizing a section of his own doctoral thesis. In 2013, the German minister of education was stripped off her doctorate she obtained in 1980 for plagiarism meanwhile two years earlier the defence minister had been forced to resign following allegations of plagiarism in his thesis. This serious academic offence has been shown to be on the rise and therefore needs to be seriously addressed

Types of Plagiarism

According to a worldwide survey which included over 900 secondary and higher education instructors (https://www.turnitin.com/static/plagiarism-spectrum/), the different types of plagiarism can be simplified into a spectrum known as the Turnitin spectrum of plagiarism. This acts as a tool to help educators, students and writers to recognize the different types of plagiarism. These are outlined from most to least severe as follows;

1. CLONE: Submitting another’s work, word-for-word, as one’s own
2. CTRL+C: Contains significant of a post from a single source without alterations
3. FIND-REPLACE: The act of changing keywords and phrases but retaining the essential content of the source in a paper
4. REMIX: An act of paraphrasing from different sources and making the content fit together seamlessly
5. RECYCLE: The act of borrowing generously from one’s previous work without citation; to self-plagiarize
6. HYBRID: The act of combining perfectly cited sources with copied passages – without citation- in one paper
7. MASHUP: A paper that represents a mix of copied material from several different sources without proper citation
8. 404 ERROR: A written piece that includes citations to non-existent or inaccurate information about sources
9. AGGREGATOR: The aggregator includes a proper citation, but the paper contains no original work
10. RE-TWEET: This paper includes a proper citation, but relies too closely on the text’s original wording and/or structure.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

Whatever our reason for writing, it is imperative that we remain within the norms of originality. We, therefore, need to avoid or prevent all the forms of plagiarism. There are simple and universally accepted ways in which plagiarism can be avoided. These include;

• Appropriate paraphrasing including references
• Quote texts correctly and add references accordingly
• Proper summarizing including references
• Copying tables, graphs and figures and providing references

If these simple rules can be followed while writing our papers or blogs or any form of writing, we will greatly curb the rate at which plagiarism is growing. A general rule is that we reference properly. In the modern era, plagiarizing can have severe career and academic ramifications. We advise that any writer checks against plagiarism during his write up.

The advent of ICTs has greatly contributed both to the occurrence and the detection of plagiarized works. Many softwares have been developed to detect overlaps between one’s work and other published works (similarity index). Among these, Turnitin, Grammarly, Ithenticate appear to be famous. Though there are no consensus guidelines on the levels of similarity allowed between one’s work and others, a similarity index of 5 to 20% may be acceptable depending on the journal or institution and on their research standards. However, this percentage discovered in a block in a scientific work is considered as plagiarism.

It’s worthy of note that the similarity index does not equate to “plagiarism index” as there is no level of accepted plagiarism.  The similarity stems from the words, clauses, and phrases that may be difficult to alter in scientific works within a given field of research. Another software example is Desktop Plagiarism Checker.  We herein, reiterate the necessity of thorough planning as key to obtaining a successful piece of work.

Resources: [1–5]

1. What is originality in research? [Internet]. ResearchGate. [cited 2019 Mar 7]. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_originality_in_research
2. What is Plagiarism? – Plagiarism.org [Internet]. [cited 2019 Jan 6]. Available from: http://www.plagiarism.org/article/what-is-plagiarism
3. Turnitin – The Plagiarism Spectrum [Internet]. [cited 2019 Jan 6]. Available from: http://go.turnitin.com/plagiarism-spectrum
4. Moss S. A history of plagiarism (not my own work). The Guardian [Internet]. 2005 Nov 23 [cited 2019 Mar 7]; Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/nov/23/comment.stephenmoss
5. German ‘plagiarism’ minister quits. 2013 Feb 9 [cited 2019 Mar 7]; Available from: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21395102