Article critique about the “plagiarism”. In this article, I learned how to cite the article from other authors in America. Since the ways we used in Asia were quite different, I needed to understand how to use the correct citation in order to avoid plagiarism.
Plagiarism Research Paper
What is plagiarism? According to dictionary.com, plagiarism is an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author’s work as one’s own. “The presentation of the work of another person as one’s own or without proper acknowledgment” (Concordia Undergraduate Calendar 2003-2004, page 65). I think there might be some different definition in different field. For me, it can be defined by stealing or copying other people’s work, or as simple as copying of someone’s ideas without explaining where they come from. We have to be very careful to avoid infringing copyright.
Everyone has their own ideas or creations, this may be the result of their efforts for a long time. Sometimes people work so hard and spend many years to publish a book or a research but someone just copy it without saying where they come from. This kind of behavior is regarded as copyright infringement. In Western cultures, individual creativity is greatly valued, and there is a strong tradition of protecting intellectual property in these societies (Goncalo & Staw, 2006). Thus, we have to learn how to respect other people’s idea. In my opinion, comply with intellectual property rights and avoid infringing copyright are the best way to respect other people.
Since we understand that plagiarism is a very bad behavior, so how are we going to avoid it. It is always easy to find information from other people’s research papers, but it’s not easy to use those information without falling into the plagiarism trap. There’s many different way to avoid plagiarism, such as paraphrase, cite, quoting or referencing. Paraphrase is a very common way to avoid plagiarism, but it’s also easy to confuse and become suspected of plagiarism. An important process of rewriting source texts is paraphrasing or restating a source text in one’s own words with a credit to the original author (Shi, 2012). The key is to understand the article you are reading and be able to express its meaning in your own words. In my country, Taiwan, when I was working on my research paper in university we didn’t follow that much rules. Normally we only including a reference page or page of works cited at the end of our research paper. We did not mention where was the information came from during the article, so I need time to adapt this changed. And since most of research paper in my field use APA style, I also start learning how to follow the formatting guidelines in APA style.
A study carried out at San José State University (Jackson, 2006) showed that students lacked the ability to apply the concept of paraphrasing in practice; they consequently need more opportunities to practice paraphrasing in order to develop a better understanding of the concept and to be able to apply it in their own texts. With all of these information, I must to make a practice of using paraphrasing more frequently in order to avoid plagiarism. This not only to prevent me from violating copyright but also to respect other people’s idea.
References
Concordia Undergraduate Calendar 2003-2004, page 65
Jack A. Goncalo & Barry M. Staw, 2006. Individualism–collectivism and group creativity, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 100 (2006) 96–109
Ling Shi 2012. Rewriting and paraphrasing source texts in second language writing, Journal of Second Language Writing 21 (2012) 134–148
Jackson, P. A. (2006). Plagiarism instruction online: Assessing undergraduate students’ ability to avoid plagiarism, College & Research Libraries, 67(5), 418–428