Plagiarism, the act of taking credit for someone else's work, has always been an issue on college campuses. While most students do practice academic honesty, there's always been someone looking to copy someone else's paper. But while the definition of plagiarism hasn't changed, new technology has changed the form of plagiarism.
Thanks to the Internet, plagiarism is easier to commit than ever. But it's also easier to catch than ever. Here's what plagiarism looks like on today's college campuses – along with plenty of reasons to avoid plagiarism in any of its ugly forms.
Internet Plagiarism, or "Cut and Paste" Plagiarism
On the Internet, information is more accessible than ever – and easier to steal. Thanks to the cut and paste function, it's incredibly easy to lift a phrase, or sentence, or paragraph, or page of information and insert it into an academic paper. With some simple Internet research, students can easily turn collages of cut and pasted information into academic essays.
This may seem like no big deal, but make no mistake. This is plagiarism. It's taking words that someone else wrote and claiming them as one's own writing.
So, students may ask, what's the big deal? That information is out there, so why can't it be freely used? Well, for one thing, someone else wrote it, so therefore, it's technically someone else's intellectual property. Legally speaking, cutting and pasting material from the Internet isn't much different than stealing someone's television set.
In addition, taking credit for someone else's work on the Internet is academic dishonesty. Professors do not assign students to collect information from the Internet and then assemble it into the form of a paper. They assign students to write and synthesize their own material and to develop their writing skills. Failure to do so is cheating, and there are serious academic consequences for this, like getting an F or getting expelled.
If these aren't good reasons to avoid Internet plagiarism, consider this: there's never been a form of plagiarism that's easier to catch. Many schools require students to turn in electronic versions of their paper so that they can be checked with plagiarism detection software – which is very effective. Even if this is not the case, professors can plug suspicious phrases from papers into search engines and easily find plagiarized material.
College Term Papers for Sale
Another form of plagiarism that's emerged online is the "term papers for sale" business. There are two main forms of this. The first are websites where students can purchase pre-written papers, or sometimes take them for free. The second are web-based businesses that offer custom college essays. For a hefty price, these websites write papers from scratch per student specifications.
Is this plagiarism? On the one hand, it's not stealing. On the other hand, it's certainly claiming someone else's words as one's own, and that's plagiarism. It's also a serious breach of academic dishonesty.
In addition to the academic dishonesty issue, there are some other serious reasons to avoid these kinds of websites. The "custom essays for college students" business has been notorious for ripping off students. Here are some more reasons why students should not purchase term papers from the Internet.
The Internet presents students with a huge temptation to plagiarize, and in moments of last-minute desperation, it may be hard to resist. However, students need to understand that these new forms of plagiarism aren't any less serious than older forms. As far as a professor's concerned, a cheater is a cheater – so stay away from all forms of plagiarism.
Naomi Rockler-Gladen - Instructional designer and freelance writer, Naomi Rockler-Gladen writes some of Suite101's most read work.
