4/25/2017 Jeff Wilson Issues related to Plagiarism

Jeff Wilson

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Issues related to Plagiarism

Students must learn to write correctly, without stealing from others. If you use someone
elses words or ideas you must give the original author credit by citing him or her. Even if
you cite, you may not use someone elses sentence, paragraph, or overall paper structure.
The way of organizing a series of thoughts originated with the author whose work you are
using, and you must respect this. When you cite someone you are crediting that person for
the idea (or in the case of exact quotes for the series of words). Your citation does not
mean that you are giving credit to the original author for the structure of your sentences or
the overall organization of your paper.

As a crude example, imagine that I write a paper on Einsteins theory of relativity by

taking Einsteins 1905 paper,

re-arranging some sentences,
substituting synonyms,
changing e=mc into m=e/c,
citing Einstein (1905),
and putting my name on the paper.

How much of this paper constitutes my work? The same is true of your paper if you

find a source that you like,

re-arrange the order of the topics,
substitute synonyms,
cite the original,
and claim the paper as your own original work.

It is still plagiarism.

Debora Weber-Wulff (On the Utility of Plagiarism Detection Software -plagiat.htw-

berlin.de/softwareutility/) describes several types of plagiarism, including

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Structural plagiarism is the next most difficult to determine. One can see the ideas
being presented in order, or perhaps the footnote citations also in the identical order to
some other work, but this happens on the level of the semantics of a text, not at a
syntactical level. This kind of plagiarism can only be detected by a human reader.

Patchwriting is defined by Howard in [3] as copying from a source text and then
deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one synonym for
another. The plagiarist takes one or more text passages as a basis, and then does
some editing: Adjectives are removed or replaced with synonyms, verb tenses
adjusted, series lists are resorted, phrases are deleted or inserted. Many students are
actually of the opinion that this is scientific writing! They feel that since they have put
some work into the report that it is now their own version, without having checked a
single fact or done any of their own research.

A kind of plagiarism that is often observed can be called copy, shake & paste.
There is an American product called Shake&Bake in which you put spices in a bag,
add pieces of chicken, shake well, and then take the pieces out in random order,
placing them on a baking sheet. This process seems to be similar to what some
students do. They find paragraphs that have something to do with their topic, copy
them, put them in a virtual bag and shake them well before putting them in random
order in their paper. When reading such a paper one is struck by marked and abrupt
changes in style and paragraphs not flowing from one to the next. from Debora
Weber-Wulff

These obviously do not involve using someone elses exact words, but they are still
plagiarism. Think about this as you write a paper. Understand something in your own
words, write it in your own words, and give credit to the original sources of your ideas.

Dont Shake & Bake. Its not great cuisine, and its terrible writing.

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