Plagiarism

The Internet makes plagiarism even easier than it used to be. Plagiarism, defined as the act of presenting oneself as the author of someone else's intellectual or creative work, is a very serious academic offense that benefits no one (it's stealing from others and only perpetuates one's own ignorance). Because the Internet is often anonymous and information is so freely available, some students do not understand that "cutting and pasting" text from the Internet without giving proper attribution constitutes plagiarism just as much as copying text out of a book. When your child uses quotations and information drawn from the Internet in his or her school reports, make sure that he or she understands why it is important to give proper credit to the originating author and/or Web site. The Internet also makes it easier for students to plagiarize by buying essays and reports from so-called "term paper assistance" companies. Many teachers and schools are quite familiar with these papers, since they are so widely available and so often turned in.

Fortunately, the Internet also makes catching plagiarists easier than it used to be. By typing a phrase or even an entire paragraph from a report into an Internet search engine, teachers can immediately call up the source text. The Internet also makes it quite easy for teachers to verify that a cited text actually exists (thus thwarting students who like to invent their own supporting evidence).

To learn more about plagiarism visit these links:

Plagiarism Tutorial
http://tutorials.sjlibrary.org/tutorial/plagiarism/
This online tutorial from SJSU is designed to help you improve your plagiarism concept.

Plagriarism.org
http://www.plagiarism.org/
An online resource that is intended to inform and educate about the problem of plagiarism. The site gives statistical information about plagiarism in America. Most of the site, however, directs Web browsers to Turnitin.com (see next).

Turnitin.com
http://www.turnitin.com/
A plagiarism detection service offered by the people behind Plagiarism.org. Papers submitted to Turnitin.com are compared against other papers, published texts, and the Internet, in order to catch plagiarists. Each submitted paper gets an "originality report" that indicates what percentage of a paper is similar to already existing texts.

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