Plague of Plagiarism

• Dr. Muhammad Ramzan• PhD (University of Malaya), MLISc-Gold Medalist• Chairman, FAIR (Foundation for Authentic Information and Research)• Director Library, LUMS• mramzaninfo@gmail.com Cell 03004487844 Fax 92 42 35898307• Skype ID: mramzaninfo

What is plagiarism?

• The word plagiarize actually comes from the Latin plagiare—to kidnap

• Plagiarism is the act of presenting the words, ideas, images, sounds, or the creative expression of others as your own

• Intellectual dishonesty and a serious crime

What is considered plagiarism?

• Copying words, signs, pictures, recordings or ideas from someone else, without giving credit

• Failing to put quotation marks where due• Giving incorrect information about the

source• Copying so many words… ideas from a

source that it makes up the majority of your work whether you give credit or not

What need not citation?

Facts that are commonly known or

• Information or judgments considered as common

knowledge

• Discussion on your own experiences, observations

or reactions

• Compiling the results of original research, from

scientific experiments, surveys etc.

Common reasons for plagiarism

It’s okay if I don’t get caught!

I am too busy to write this paper!

(Job, big game, too much work!)

Faculty expect

too much!

Promotion, salary raises

fame My family

expects to finish soon

This assignment was boring!

Everyone does it!

Poor research,communication

skills

Top web sources being used for plagiarism: findings of a study

1. Social Networking and Content Sharing (33%)

2. The next category consists of legitimate academic, educational and homework (25%) help sites that offer a range of content to educate students

3. Paper Mills and Cheat Sites (14.8%)4. News and Portals (13.6%)5. Encyclopedia web sites (9.5%)6. Other sources 4.1%

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Levels of plagiarism

• Full plagiarism• Without changes in language, thoughts, flows

• Partial plagiarism• Combination of two to three different sources with little

rephrasing• Minimalistic plagiarism

• Someone else’ ideas and thoughts in own flow with lots of rephrasing without acknowledgement

• Source citation• Ghost author, false, inaccessible source citing

• Self plagiarism• Publishing same material, ideas through different mediums

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Types of plagiarism

Intentional• Copying a friend’s work, buying or borrowing papers• Cutting and pasting blocks of text from electronic sources

without documenting• Media “borrowing“ without documentation• Web publishing without permissions of creators

Unintentional• Careless paraphrasing• Poor documentation• Quoting excessively• Failure to use your own voice

Avoiding plagiarism

• Quoting• Paraphrasing • Summarizing• Referencing

To blend source materials in a way that your own creativity is expressed well

Quoting

Quotations are the exact words or any other contribution of an author, copied directly from a source, word for word/exactly. Quotations must be cited!

Use quotations when:• You want to add the power of an author’s words to support

your argument• You want to disagree with an author’s argument• You want to highlight particularly eloquent or powerful

phrases or passages• You are comparing and contrasting specific points of view• You want to note the important research that precedes your

own

Quoting example 1

Example“Administration and/or funding agencies purchase personal computers for the information centre and omit any training. All too often, the outcome after a year or so is that the hardware sits idle because no one understands the hardware, software, or system (if one was established) well enough to keep it running” (Johnson, 1991, p. 22).

“The effort required to provide online information literacy instruction is intense.” (Smith 2006, p.42)

Quoting example II

When quoting, you need quotation marks, a reference, and an item in your bibliography  

“Academic libraries across Pakistan are for behind in achieving excellent IT levels, despite the efforts of both the government and the private sector to make the technology available to all the libraries under their jurisdiction.” (Ramzan 2009, p. 583)  

Ramzan, M. D. Singh (2009). Status of information technology applications in Pakistani libraries. The Electronic Library, Vol 27 (4), pp.573-587.

ParaphrasingParaphrasing means rephrasing the words of an author, putting his/her thoughts in your own words. When you paraphrase, you rework the source’s ideas, words, phrases, and sentence structures with your own. Like quotations, paraphrased material must be followed with in-text documentation and cited on your references

Paraphrase when:• You plan to use information on your note cards and wish to

avoid plagiarizing • You want to avoid overusing quotations• You want to use your own voice to present information

Paraphrasing example I

Original Paragraph“Business communication is increasingly taking place internationally – in all countries, among all peoples, and across all cultures. An awareness of other cultures – of their languages, customs, experiences and perceptions – as well as an awareness of the way in which other people conduct their business, are now essential ingredients of business communication” (Chase, 2003, p.59).

Example of ParaphrasingThe importance of understanding the traditions, language, perceptions and the manner in which people of other cultures conduct their business should never be underestimated, and is a crucial component of business communication (Chase, 2003).

Paraphrasing example II• Original (Gratz, 1982):

Bilateral vagotomy resulted in an increase in tidal volume but a depression in respiratory frequency was such that total ventilation did not change.

•Paraphrased 1: Gratz (1982) showed that bilateral vagotomy resulted in an increase in tidal volume but a depression in respiratory frequency was such that total ventilation did not change.

Ronald K. Gratz. Using Other’s Words and Ideas.Department of Biological Sciences, Michigan Technological University

Paraphrasing example III

• Original (Buchanan, 1996):What makes intentionally killing a human being a moralwrong for which the killer is to be condemned is that thekiller did this morally bad thing not inadvertently or evennegligently, but with a conscious purpose – with eyesopen and a will directed toward that very object.

• Paraphrased 2:Buchanan (1996) states that we condemn a person whointentionally kills a human being because he did a"morally bad thing" not through negligence or accidentbut with open eyes and a direct will to take that life.

Tip: Keep the original source away while paraphrasing

Summarizing

• Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) of one or several writers into your own words, including only the main point(s).

• Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material. Again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to their original sources.

Summarize when: • You want to establish background or offer an overview of a topic• You want to describe knowledge (from several sources) about a

topic• You want to determine the main ideas of a single source

Summarizing example 1

Example: Original Source“The effort required to provide online information literacy instruction is intense.” (Smith 2006, p42.)

Summary: Smith (2006) argues that providing online courses in information literacy is hard work.

Summarizing example II

Original source: ‘At a typical football match we are likely to see players committing deliberate fouls, often behind the referee’s back. They might try to take a throw-in or a free kick from an incorrect but more advantageous positions in defiance of the clearly stated rules of the game. They sometimes challenge the rulings of the referee or linesmen in an offensive way which often deserves exemplary punishment or even sending off. No wonder spectators fight amongst themselves, damage stadiums, or take the law into their own hands by invading the pitch in the hope of affecting the outcome of the match.’

Summary: participants to test their skills

Summarizing example II

Original source: ‘At a typical football match we are likely to see players committing deliberate fouls, often behind the referee’s back. They might try to take a throw-in or a free kick from an incorrect but more advantageous positions in defiance of the clearly stated rules of the game. They sometimes challenge the rulings of the referee or linesmen in an offensive way which often deserves exemplary punishment or even sending off. No wonder spectators fight amongst themselves, damage stadiums, or take the law into their own hands by invading the pitch in the hope of affecting the outcome of the match.’

Summary: Unsportsmanlike behavior by footballers may cause hooliganism among spectators.

Referencing (in-text /bibliography)

• Note page number and author name when consulting a source material

• Refer in text and bibliography the original sources, whether you quote or paraphrase it

• Refer whenever you summarize original ideas • Refer whenever you use factual information that is

not common knowledge• Organize your notes in an order (A-Z by author)• Verify references from journals/publisher’s websites

or published bibliographies• Use authentic sources for review and referencing

ReferencingWhen referring to an author’s work, you don’t need quotation marks, but you do need a reference, and an item in your bibliography  Maughan (2001) demonstrates that the information literacy gap in higher education is leaving university graduates devoid of the very skills they require to function well within the information workplace.

Bibliography Maughan, P. D. (2001). Assessing information literacy among undergraduates: A discussion of the literature and the assessment experience. College & Research Libraries, 62(1), 71-85.

Style manuals

Humanities MLA [Modern Language Association] & Harvard

Social Sciences APA Style Manual—Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

Sciences ACS [American Chemical Society] Style Guide

General Chicago Manual of Style & Harvard

In order to cite materials properly you should use a style manual. Different style manuals are used for different disciplines or subject areas. Here are certain style manuals commonly used in the various disciplines. HEC has adopted APA

Automated referencing tools• Thomson Reuters EndNote help to search online

bibliographic databases, organize their references, images and PDFs in any language, and create bibliographies and figure lists instantly. www.endnote.com/

• RefWorks allows users to create personal databases and use them for a variety of research activities. References are quickly and easily imported from text files or online databases. Users can automatically insert references from their database into their papers and generate formatted bibliographies and manuscripts in seconds. www.refworks.com/

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Plagiarism detection services

Institutional Software Turnitin

www.turnitin.com Allows to check work for improper citation or potential plagiarism by comparing it against online databases and web resources.

A web-based content search system that HEC has adopted

Turnitin features

• Encourages Proper Citation• Over 12 Billion Web Pages Crawled &

Archived• Over 100 Million Student Papers• Over 80,000 Major Newspapers, Magazines &

Scholarly Journals• Thousands Of Books Including Literary

Classics• Printable Reports• Side-By-Side Comparison

Turnitin originality report

Comparison between the submitted text resources available on Internet and with Turnitin archives

Possible similarity in coloursBlue-no matchingGreen—one word to 24% matching textYellow 25-49% matchingOrange---50-74%Red---75-100% matching textExercise……………….

Turnitin Originality Report

Originality reports are simply a tool to help instructor find sources that contain text similar to submitted papers.

The decision to deem any work plagiarized must be made carefully, only after depth examination of both submitted paper and suspect sources in accordance with the institutional policy (Reference turnitin originality check)

References I• WWW.plgiarism.com retrieved on 15 June 2011• WWW.turnitin.com retrieved on 12 June 2011.• Dawson, M.M. and J.A. Overfield. 2008. Plagiarism:

do students know what it is? Bioscience Education ejournal. Vol 8 November 2006.

• Anderson I. 2009. Avoiding plagiarism in academic writing. Nursing Standards. Vol 23 no. 18, pp 35-37.

• Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. www.hec.gov.pk accessed on 20 August 2010.

• Fain, Margaret. “Internet Paper Mills.” Kimbal Library. 12July 2010. http://www.coastal.edu/library/mills2.htm

References II• Lathrop, Ann and Kathleen Foss. Student Cheating and

Plagiarism in the Internet Era. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 2000.

• Lewis, Mark. “Doris Kearns Goodwin And The Credibility Gap.” Forbes.com 2 Feb. 2002. <http://www.forbes.com/2002/02/27/0227goodwin.html>

• Oliver, P. 2008. The Student’s Guide to Research. Maidenhead: Open University Press

• Sabato, Larry J. “Joseph Biden's Plagiarism; Michael Dukakis's 'Attack Video' – 1988.” Washington Post Online. 1998. 3 March 2002. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/biden.htm>

Consequences of plagiarism

• ?????• Right now• 10 years down the time• 25 years and so on

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Thank you