Some notes on Plagiarism
Have you ever been to the movie theater and come out thinking “I’ve seen this plot before, what a scam!”, or have you ever listened to a song with very familiar tunes while thinking “Seriously? You couldn’t come up with something of your own…”? These thoughts are very common, and they usually cause indignation or, at the very least, disapproval. If it bothers us so much when someone steals someone else’s work in art or entertainment (and it should bother us), why don’t we react the same way when it comes to academic plagiarism? Next, we will briefly discuss the following questions: What is plagiarism? What’s the point of doing research? How do we avoid plagiarizing work?
What do we mean when we say plagiarism? Plagiarizing means “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own” or to “use (another's production) without crediting the source” (Merriam-Webster 2018). It is not rare for students to write a paper or an essay putting together the product of their research and ideas… without specifying where those research and ideas came from! It could be argued that research is supposed to be original and that we read stuff, but ultimately write our own interpretation and insight, and so forth. That is all real, but we are not coming up with ideas totally on our own, out of nowhere. We read, we look at the news, we go to talks and classes, and get inspired. This inspiration sparks something in us and makes us look more into the topic and maybe contribute with something to it. All of this means that we are building new knowledge and doing research based on what other people have done. Yes, we add our twist to it, and that’s the valuable part, but that doesn’t mean that we can just ignore everything that led us to come up with that twist in the first place.
This would take us to our next question: What’s the point of doing research, if I’m just repeating what other people have said? Well, it may seem like that, but it is not quite the case. Research is the starting point of any science or discipline. Everything we read, everything we are taught in school, all the cool topics we are interested in and read about, whether it pertains to Social Sciences, Art, Natural Sciences or whatever you like, each and every one of them is the result of years, decades and centuries of research. Each discipline is a huge castle in the making and, sometimes, we may only contribute with a brick or a splash of cement. As tiny as our contribution may seem, without it, that castle would be a little smaller, a little incomplete.
Finally, we will talk about our last question: How do we avoid plagiarizing work? Sometimes, we read and look at so many sources, that when it gets to the point of writing and adding our little brick to the castle, we have doubts regarding where we found some of the information. I am guilty of this as well, and I had to develop ways of avoiding this situation. To prevent this, it is important to keep track of all the sources you look at, even if you do not end up needing them. In later posts, we will cover different techniques that will help you track your sources efficiently. Once you do this, then it becomes easier to follow the 3 Cs rule: Cite, cite, cite! Every time you mention someone else’s ideas, even if you are not literally quoting them, you still need to give them credit for it.
To conclude, it is important to remember that what we can say about our fields of research is valuable. We all have something new and exciting to share. However, this does not mean that we can just ignore the foundations we are standing on, because without those foundations, our little brick would just fall and shatter to pieces.