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Sanctions
[edit] Academia
In the academic world, plagiarism by students is a very serious offense that can result in punishments such as a failing grade on the particular assignment (typically at the high school level) or for the course (typically at the college or university level). For cases of repeated plagiarism, or for cases in which a student commits severe plagiarism (e.g., submitting a copied article as his or her own work), a student may be suspended or expelled. Many students feel pressured to complete papers well and quickly, and with the accessibility of new technology (The Internet) students can plagiarize by copying and pasting information from other sources. This is often easily detected by teachers, for several reasons. First, students choice of sources are frequently unoriginal; instructors may receive the same passage copied from a popular source (such as Wikipedia) from several students. Second, it is often easy to tell whether a student used his or her own “voice.” Third, students may choose sources which are inappropriate, off-topic, or contain incorrect information. Fourth, lecturers may insist that submitted work is first submitted to an online plagiarism detector.[1]
In many universities, academic degrees or awards may be revoked as a penalty for plagiarism.
There is little academic research into the frequency of plagiarism in high schools. Much of the research investigated plagiarism at the post-secondary level.[2] Of the forms of cheating (including plagiarism, inventing data, and cheating during an exam), students admit to plagiarism more than any other. However, this figure decreases considerably when students are asked about the frequency of “serious” plagiarism (such as copying most of an assignment or purchasing a complete paper from a website). Recent use of plagiarism detection software (see below) gives a more accurate picture of this activitys prevalence.
For professors and researchers, plagiarism is punished by sanctions ranging from suspension to termination, along with the loss of credibility and integrity. Charges of plagiarism against students and professors are typically heard by internal disciplinary committees, which students and professors have agreed to be bound by.
[edit] Journalism
Since journalisms main currency is public trust, a reporters failure to honestly acknowledge their sources undercuts a newspaper or television news shows integrity and undermines its credibility. Journalists accused of plagiarism are often suspended from their reporting tasks while the charges are being looked into by the news organization.
The ease in copying electronic text from the Internet has lured a number of reporters into acts of plagiarism; column writers have been caught copying and pasting articles and text from a number of websites.
[edit] Online plagiarism
Since it is very easy to steal content from the web by simply copying and pasting, the problem of online plagiarism is growing. This phenomenon, also known as content scraping, is affecting both established sites [3] and blogs [4]. The motivation is often to attract away part or all of the original sites search engine-generated web traffic and to convert these stolen visitors into revenue through the use of online ads.
Free online tools are becoming available to detect and prevent plagiarism [5], and there are a range of approaches that attempt to limit online copying, such as disabling right clicking and placing warning banners against plagiarism on web pages. Once identified, instances of plagiarism are commonly addressed by the rightful content owners sending a DMCA removal notice to the offending site-owner, or to the ISP that is hosting the offending site.
[edit] Other contexts
Generally, although plagiarism is often loosely referred to as theft or stealing, it has not been set as a criminal matter in the courts.[6] Likewise, plagiarism has no standing as a criminal offense in the common law. Instead, claims of plagiarism are a civil law matter, which an aggrieved person can resolve by launching a lawsuit. Acts that may constitute plagiarism are in some instances treated as copyright infringement, unfair competition, or a violation of the doctrine of moral rights. The increased availability of intellectual property due to a rise in technology has furthered the debate as to whether copyright offences are criminal.
[edit] Self-plagiarism
Self-plagiarism is the reuse of significant, identical, or nearly identical portions of ones own work without acknowledging that one is doing so or without citing the original work. Typically, high public-interest texts are not a subject of self-plagiarism; however, the authors should not violate copyright where applicable. “Public-interest texts” include such material as social, professional, and cultural opinions usually published in newspapers and magazines.
In academic fields, self-plagiarism is a problem when an author reuses portions of his or her own published and copyrighted work in subsequent publications, but without attributing the previous publication.[7] Identifying self-plagiarism