INTRODUCTION:
One cannot cure a sickness without knowing full well the name of the sickness; it cause, type or kind, therefore I have to start from the definition of plagiarism and its form before talking more on the evils of plagiarism and its remedy if any.
Plagiarism is presenting and using another author’s published or unpublished doing; including his work such as theories, concepts, data, and source of materials: primary or secondary materials, methodologies or findings, including his graphs and images, as one’s own, without appropriate referencing and without permission when permission is required. Plagiarism also includes literal copying, failure in paraphrasing or attribution, and the misuse of privilege information obtained through confidential book review of research proposals and manuscripts.
Plagiarism also can occur in different state of any research project from proposing to communication and reports in research. It is best understood in the context of communicating research, it is also observed in other research activities such as in preaching sermon at the pulpit, speech seminars in high institutions, etc.
For us to understand more on the effects/evils of plagiarism; one has to know the forms of plagiarism, because plagiarism is sometimes is a causing as a result of ignorance of an individual or persons.
FORMS OF PLAGIARISM:
THE USING A COPY OF YOUR OWN WORK: Plagiarism of this type is not based on stealing the work of others, but on reworking your own as the name applied. You may have covered the topic before and gained a good grade; if you are now short on time, it can be easy to think that can piece your own old work together with your new work and produce a successful one; but officially, you can’t have two grade for the same work, so if you do this kind of plagiarism, it is called self-plagiarism and is wrong as a scholar.
DELIBRATE PLAGIARISM: This is also call extreme plagiarism, why is because the total work of someone else’s work is use as your own.
PARAPHRASING: This type of plagiarism is strategic; it involves reading a few texts, writing down a few main sentences, changing the words around, and throwing in a few quotes and citations to throw your audience away from your tricks and then seeing it as your own original work.
BLUFFING: This kind of plagiarism is achieve when someone is ignorantly thinking that he has fool his audience by selecting main phrases of someone’s work and then writing down the information so that they can be seen different; not knowing that the idea of information is still the same.
STITCHING SOURCES: This is also known as “grey zone” because all the source of information/idea used are usually correctly cited in the original copy but the plagiary (kidnapper) has failed to develop his analytical finding skills to enable him to work effectively and produce a work that is truly his own. It is all because of inexperience of an individual.
THE EVILS/CONSEQJENCES OF PLAGIARISM:
The evils of plagiarism can be seen in different ways; it can be seen in academics, professionals, students, journalists, authors, scholars, lawyers, marketers, et al.
Plagiarism destroys academic reputations; professional reputations; student reputations; author reputations etc which impoverishes their effort in their various careers. According to the law of the federation; any person that sues an individual to court because of this offence could pay for monetary penalties.
There are no excuses of ignorance for plagiarism act, there is a plagiarism software and checker, and one has to use that before publishing or producing your work to avoid loss of career and legal problems that may rise up from it. In writing your project or in your speech presentations, try to learn about a constitute work and understand its original before use to avoid embarrassment.
Plagiarism can be avoided by responsible referencing and attribution, plagiarism by authorship, where a contributor to a research output is improperly omitted as an author, is generally best as an authorship dispute but accidentally or deliberately you didn’t recognize the authorship, the individual name is ruined and he is seen as a kidnapper or a literary theft.
In conclusion; there are ways to avoid this evil of plagiarism, firstly is by making a clean note and indicating were the source of your note comes from, show a direct quotation from the note you have made, paraphrase your note in your completed essay you have made, you can also apply correct punctuation when citing quote when taking note. With this, one can avoid the evils of plagiarism.
