Plagiarism is the representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary: use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work qtd. in From the Oxford English Dictionary: The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft. The American Heritage Dictionary (5th ed.), defines plagiarize thus: "To reproduce or otherwise use the words, ideas, or other work of another as one's own, or without attribution." Although precise definitions vary depending on the institution, in many countries and cultures plagiarism is considered a violation of academic integrity and journalistic ethics, as well as of social norms around learning, teaching, research, fairness, respect, and responsibility. As such, a person or entity that is determined to have committed plagiarism is often subject to various punishments or sanctions, such as suspension, expulsion from school or work, fines, imprisonment, and other penalties.
Not all cultures and countries hold the same beliefs about personal ownership of language or ideas, and plagiarism is typically not in itself a crime. However, like counterfeiting, fraud can be punished in a court for prejudices caused by copyright infringement, violation of moral rights, or torts. In academia and in industry, it is a serious ethical offense. Plagiarism and copyright infringement functionally overlap, depending on the copyright law protection in force, but they are not equivalent concepts, and although many types of plagiarism may not meet the legal requirements in copyright law as adjudicated by courts, they still constitute the passing-off of another's work as one's own, and thus plagiarism.
Etymology and ancient history In the 1st century, the use of the Latin word (literally "kidnapper") to denote copying someone else's creative work was pioneered by the Roman poet Martial, who complained that another poet had "kidnapped his verses". Plagiary, a derivative of plagiarus, was introduced into English in 1601 by dramatist Ben Jonson during the Jacobean Era to describe someone guilty of literary theft. Republished as: The derived form plagiarism was introduced into English around 1620. The Latin words ("kidnapper") and ("kidnapping") have the same root: plaga ("snare", "net"), which is based on the Indo-European root *-plak, "to weave".
It is frequently claimed that people in antiquity had no concept of plagiarism, or at least did not condemn it, and that it only came to be seen as immoral much later, anywhere from the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th century to the Romantic movement in the 18th century. Although people in antiquity found detecting plagiarism difficult due to long travel times and scarcity of literate persons, there are a considerable number of pre-Enlightenment authors who accused others of plagiarism and considered it distasteful and scandalous, including historians Polybius and Pliny the Elder. The 3rd century Greek work Lives of the Eminent Philosophers mentions that Heraclides Ponticus was accused of plagiarizing () a treatise on Hesiod and Homer. In Vitruvius's 7th book, he acknowledged his debt to earlier writers and attributed them, and he also included a strong condemnation of plagiarism: "Earlier writers deserve our thanks, those, on the contrary, deserve our reproaches, who steal the writings of such men and publish them as their own. Those, who depend in their writings, not on their own ideas, but who enviously do wrong to the works of others and boast of it, deserve not merely to be blamed, but to be sentenced to actual punishment for their wicked course of life." Vitruvius went on to claim that "such things did not pass without strict chastisement". He recounted a story where the well-read Aristophanes of Byzantium judged a poetry competition and caught most of the contestants plagiarizing others' poems as their own. The king ordered the plagiarizers to confess that they were thieves, and they were condemned to disgrace. Although the story may be apocryphal, it shows that Vitruvius personally considered plagiarism reprehensible.
Legal aspects
Although plagiarism in some contexts is considered theft or stealing, the concept does not exist in a legal sense. The use of someone else's work in order to gain academic credit may however meet some legal definitions of fraud. "Plagiarism" specifically is not mentioned in any current statute, either criminal or civil.Lands, Robert (1999) Plagiarism is no Crime published by The Association of Illustrators (AOI), December 1999. Quotation: "Plagiarism may be a taboo in academia, but in art is almost essential." Some cases may be treated as unfair competition or a violation of the doctrine of moral rights. In short, people are asked to use the guideline, "if you did not write it yourself; you must give credit".
Plagiarism is not the same as copyright infringement. Although both terms may apply to a particular act, they are different concepts, and false claims of authorship generally constitute plagiarism regardless of whether the material is protected by copyright. Copyright infringement is a violation of the rights of a copyright holder, when material whose use is restricted by copyright is used without consent. Plagiarism, in contrast, is concerned with the unearned increment to the plagiarizing author's reputation, or the obtaining of academic credit, that is achieved through false claims of authorship. Thus, plagiarism is considered a moral offense against the plagiarist's audience (for example, a reader, listener, or teacher).
Plagiarism is also considered a moral offense against anyone who has provided the plagiarist with a benefit in exchange for what is specifically supposed to be original content (for example, the plagiarist's publisher, employer, or teacher). In such cases, acts of plagiarism may sometimes also form part of a claim for breach of the plagiarist's contract, or, if done knowingly, for a civil wrong.
There is a journal dedicated to the study of plagiarism, Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification.
In academia Within academia, plagiarism by students, professors, or researchers is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud, and offenders are subject to academic censure, up to and including expulsion for students and termination of contracts for professors and researchers.
Some institutions use plagiarism detection software to uncover potential plagiarism and to deter students from plagiarizing. However, plagiarism detection software does not always yield accurate results, and there are loopholes in these systems. Some universities address the issue of academic integrity by providing students with thorough orientation, including required writing courses and clearly articulated honor codes. Indeed, there is a virtually uniform understanding among college students that plagiarism is wrong. Nevertheless, each year a number of students are brought before their institutions' disciplinary boards on charges that they have misused sources in their schoolwork. However, the practice of plagiarizing by using sufficient word substitutions to elude detection software, known as , has rapidly evolved.Mario Jarmasz, July, 2003. ROGET'S THESAURUS AS A LEXICAL RESOURCE FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING. Thesis, Ottawa, Canada. "Rogeting" is an informal neologism created to describe the act of modifying a published source by substituting synonyms for sufficient words to fool plagiarism detection software, often resulting in the creation of new meaningless phrases through extensive synonym swapping. The term, a reference to Roget's Thesaurus, coined by Chris Sadler, principal lecturer in business information systems at Middlesex University, who uncovered the practice in papers submitted by his students, though there is no scholarly evidence of Rogeting more broadly, as little specific research has been conducted.
Another form of plagiarism known as "contract cheating" involves students paying someone else, such as an essay mill, to do their work for them. As of 2021, few parts of the world have legislation that prohibits the operation or the promotion of contract cheating services.
Because it is predicated upon an expected level of learning and comprehension having been achieved, all associated academic accreditation becomes seriously undermined if plagiarism is allowed to become the norm within academic submissions.
For professors and researchers, plagiarism is punished by sanctions ranging from suspension to termination, along with the loss of credibility and perceived integrity. Charges of plagiarism against students and professors are typically heard by internal disciplinary committees, by which students and professors have agreed to be bound. Plagiarism is a common reason for academic research papers to be retracted. Library science is developing approaches to address the issue of plagiarism at institutional levels.
Scholars of plagiarism include Rebecca Moore Howard,Howard, R. M. (2016). "Plagiarism in Higher Education: An Academic Literacies Issue? – Introduction". In T. Bretag (Ed.), Handbook of Academic Integrity (pp. 499–501). Singapore: Springer Singapore. Susan Blum,Blum, S. D. (2016). "What it means to be a student today". In T. Bretag (Ed.), Handbook of academic integrity (pp. 383–406). Singapore: Springer. Tracey Bretag,Bretag, T. (Ed.) (2016). Handbook of Academic Integrity. Singapore: Springer Singapore. and Sarah Elaine Eaton.Eaton, S. E., Guglielmin, M., & Otoo, B. (2017). "Plagiarism: Moving from punitive to pro-active approaches". In A. P. Preciado Babb, L. Yeworiew, & S. Sabbaghan (Eds.), Selected Proceedings of the IDEAS Conference 2017: Leading Educational Change Conference (pp. 28–36). Calgary, Canada: Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary.
There is a moral implication to plagiarism in that it takes for granted other people's time, work, and effort. This deontological scrutiny of plagiarism is important to the debate on the ethics of plagiarism. Doctor Amy Robillard poses the metaphor that "plagiarism is theft", and believes that the ethics of that statement are important for schooling and academia. Work that has been plagiarized could be considered intellectual property, and so to plagiarize would constitute copyright or intellectual property infringement. However, some consider plagiarism to have a deeper context in which writings are to be considered property, and hence a work's unlawful usage by plagiarists would constitute theft and has ethical implications in academia and elsewhere.
No universally adopted definition of academic plagiarism exists. However, this section provides several definitions to exemplify the most common characteristics of academic plagiarism. It has been called "The use of ideas, concepts, words, or structures without appropriately acknowledging the source to benefit in a setting where originality is expected."
This is an abridged version of Teddi Fishman's definition of plagiarism, which proposed five elements characteristic of plagiarism. According to Fishman, plagiarism occurs when someone:
Furthermore, plagiarism is defined differently among institutions of higher learning and universities:
At Stanford it is the "use, without giving reasonable and appropriate credit to or acknowledging the author or source, of another person's original work, whether such work is made up of code, formulas, ideas, language, research, strategies, writing or other form". At Yale it is the "use of another's work, words, or ideas without attribution", which includes "using a source's language without quoting, using information from a source without attribution, and paraphrasing a source in a form that stays too close to the original".