Rise Of Plagiarism And Advancement Of Technology

Impact of Plagiarism

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Plagiarism has been defined to be an act of appropriating an idea, either a part of it or the entire work or the idea completely. The act does not require the elements of intention and would still be considered plagiarised even if permission has been taken from the original author. It is important that while using information from some other source, the source must be fully acknowledged. If the source is not acknowledged then it would fall under the category of Plagiarism and would attract the copyright laws of the country.
Technology has helped in both making the information readily available for people and therefore vulnerable to plagiarism, but it has also helped in detecting plagiarism by use of software. Incidences of plagiarism have been found in all fields, such as Led Zepplin’s one famous music piece was copied from a similar music by Taurus by Randy California (The Guardian, 2016), other such events include USA Todays Crossword compiler who was accused of plagiarism (The Guardian, 2016).

The report is focused on the issue of Plagiarism which has been defined by the University of Oxford as an act of copying, somebody’s work or idea and showing it to be their own, this could be an intentional, deliberate act or even unintentional, and could also be with or without the consent of the original author. The key word is whether the word or idea was incorporated from the original source and was not fully acknowledged.
Plagiarism is not a new concept, even when there were no computers or technology people used to copy content, manually from the available sources, such as reports, news papers, books etc (Smith and Smith, 2012). but it was difficult to identify plagiarism as that was only possible if the person reading it could remember the extracts out of his own memory. With the advent of technology it did not only became easier for people to find information and copy it, but also to know and check if somebody has copied the content or not.

Impact of Plagiarism can be seen all around us, plagiarism has become an offence which is severely punishable. In 2014, CNN editor was fired for plagiarism on a continuous basis, there were 50 reported stories that were plagiarised and Reuters was the commonly used source for it (The Washington Post, 2014). In this incident the plagiarism was caught in a regular check that CNN does wherein only when the editors all the reports were suspected of being plagiarised and when checked the issue turned out to be true.

With the rise in technology, students get advanced ways to plagiarise, as there are various sources available through which information can be taken. Technological escalation brings new avenues for people to plagiarise, for example it is very easy to find material on the internet and then simple paraphrase the same document or just pick up material from different sources (Fiedler and Kaner, 2010). But it is not only in terms of promoting plagiarism that technology is being used, but it is also being used to mitigate it. This is done by proliferation of advanced technology to catch plagiarism.
Rise of Plagiarism

Plagiarism is not only seen in academic literature, but also in other fields too, such as music, press release, magazine content, song writing, art work etc. there is plagiarism through many ways, like people use sketches or pictures made or taken by others and then use it for some other use (The Huffington Post, 2015). There are incidences of plagiarism in the field of art and sculpture (The Huffington Post, 2015), there was another incident when a republican took down a part of the campaigning websites when the content of the site was found to have been taken from other sources.

Tools for detecting plagiarism

Many enhanced tools are available these days, few are even free of cost to stop the menace of plagiarism and also help in recognising genuine work of a person. Following tools will give an insight on its technique to check plagiarism.

a) Grammarly: it is one of the best technology for an automatic proofreading system and instantaneously corrects grammar that is widely used by people.

b) Whitesmoke: a co-rival of grammarly, can detect duplicate content with a high possibility of harming site’s ranking. But this tool is fraught with challenges as it produces dissatisfying results a few times as per the user reviews.

c) Small SEO tools: it is a highly enhanced tool with many exclusive features like Article Rewriter, Keyword Position, Online Ping Website Tool, Backlink Checker, Backlink Maker, Link Tracker etc. as soon as this tool is executed on a given text, the copied text appears in red.

d) Viper: its working is very simple as it just scans the document against billion other resources and at the same time it analyses it for plagiarism.

e) Turn it in: initiated by 4 UC Berkeley students, it developed from a prototype to significant plagiarism detection. It comes with a minimal fee and also offers citations along with various writing tools for students. It is popular among teachers, professors etc.

WEB 2.0 is a new technology for better connectivity and an enhanced quality of providing information and creating wider communications. WEB 2.0 is a revolution in terms of technology outdating the earlier World Wide Web (1.0), as 2.0 brings in more freely available content which could be readily accessible to anybody anywhere. Web 2.0 creates user generated content easily available with the perks of unification of communication channels, it also has the ability to reach a higher number of people and is indeed a revolution. But this revolution is havoc to the intellectual property rights as it affects the roots of originality and promotes plagiarism due to easy availability of all the information without any hassles.
Features in Web 2.0 (Harinarayan and Vasanth Raju, 2014):
1. The information is classified freely.
2. User experience is good
3. User himself is also a contributor
4. There is readily transfer of information
5. Content is openly available to the users who can use it and reuse and and distribute it as their own.
6. There are multiple channels of communication
In a survey conducted in 2008 (Click and Petit, 2010), wherein the participants were higher education institutions the following results came up wherein the current use of WEB 2.0 and its prospective use by the same people was surveyed.

The results showed a very high degree of users of Web 2.0, it has even replaced the academic system and students are highly dependent on the data available online. The problem is with the authenticity of the material as the authencity is highly questionable due the accessibility of the information along with its reach. The information available might be incorrect as there is no guarantee for the source to be genuine. People use content from various websites and repost it to make them look like their own. The problem with the present teaching method arises due to lack of training and knowledge to the teachers due to which web sources are misused by students and they rely completely on these web based sources (Jung, 2014).

WEB 2.0 and its impact on Plagiarism

Conclusion

It is an author’s responsibility towards its readers to write or produce its work in an ethical manner. But in the age of technology everybody wants to take short cuts in order to gain and reach their targets and objectives, which has lead to plagiarism at a very high level. Technology has made this even easier for people who use other people’s hard work and show it to be their own. Plagiarism has been seen as an unethical conduct and is severely punished even at school and college level. The laws involved in the issue of plagiarism are copyright laws, which protect the original work of an author.
It has been scientifically proven that a human beings Psychology is such that it would only stop himself from doing something if the consequences of that act are penal, i.e. things that are punishable (Roig, 2010), only those are considered to be as wrong and if the punishment is of a serious nature only then would they refrain themselves, this is because there needs to be a threat instilled in people to stop them from doing anything wrong.

A. Academic level: There are ways through which plagiarism can be avoided at academic level, this could be done by teachers (Trushell, Byrne and Simpson, 2011) if they keep in mind the following recommendations:
1. Selection of an appropriate topic, which would make the student research at a primary level. To do so, it must be noted that topics that are commonly available on internet must not be given to students.
2. In order to facilitate a student’s research teachers must help student in making a base of the research, then student’s must be given several opportunities to send in their drafts so as to help them complete the assignment.
3. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to ask students to use sources that are not available online, specifically from the college library.
B. Other recommendations:
1. Acknowledging the sources is important to avoid plagiarism.
2. Mention sources that are directly related to the content. Manipulation by giving indirect sources or sources which were found on other sources, given an incomplete representation of the original work (Roig, 2010).
3. When using other sources, it must be clear which idea is originally belonging to the author, and which has been adapted from other sources.
4. Authors must abide by the copyright laws and before using someone else’s work they must seek prior permission.

References

Smith, K. and Smith, M. (2012). Academic Dishonesty—Cheating Behaviour and Other Forms of Inappropriate Conduct. Accounting Education, 21(3), pp.211-213.
Fiedler, R. and Kaner, C. (2010). Plagiarism-Detection Services: How Well Do They Actually Perform?. IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag., 29(4), pp.37-43.
The Washington Post, (2014). CNN fires news editor Marie-Louise Gumuchian for plagiarism. [online] Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/05/16/cnn-fires-news-editor-marie-louise-gumuchian-for-plagiarism/ [Accessed 7 Jul. 2016].
The Guardian, (2016). USA Today drops crossword compiler accused of plagiarism. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/may/11/usa-today-drops-crossword-compiler-accused-of-plagiarism [Accessed 7 Jul. 2016].
The Guardian, (2016). Jury deliberating in Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven plagiarism trial. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jun/22/led-zeppelin-stairway-to-heaven-plagiarism-trial-jury [Accessed 7 Jul. 2016].

Roig, M. (2010). Plagiarism and self-plagiarism: What every author should know. Biochemia Medica, pp.295-300.
The Huffington Post, (2015). SNL Accused Of Plagiarizing Comedy Sketch. Again. [online] Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saturday-night-live-plagiarism_us_566762e0e4b0f290e5210ef1?section=india&utm_hp_ref=plagiarism [Accessed 7 Jul. 2016].
Trushell, J., Byrne, K. and Simpson, R. (2011). Cheating behaviours, the Internet and Education undergraduate students. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(2), pp.136-145.
the Huffington Post, (2015). Rachel Dolezal’s Artwork Is Not Only Problematic, It Might Be Plagiarized. [online] Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rachel-dolezal-art_n_7586972.html?section=india&utm_hp_ref=plagiarism [Accessed 7 Jul. 2016].
Jung, E. (2014). Perceptions of High School Special Classroom Teachers on the Status of Teaching Subjects and Support Needs. Special Education Research, 13(3), p.349.
Click, A. and Petit, J. (2010). Social networking and Web 2.0 in information literacy. International Information & Library Review, 42(2), pp.137-142.
Harinarayana, N. and Vasantha Raju, N. (2010). Web 2.0 features in university library web sites. The Electronic Library, 28(1), pp.69-88.