The Ethics Of Plagiarism And Essay Mills In The Digital Age

Ethics of Plagiarism

What Are The Ethics Of Plagiarism And Essay Mills In The Digital Age?

Plagiarism comes from the Latin word ‘Plagio’ which translate to steal. It is significant to formulate on the definition of the plagiarism from the verb plagiarize (Amos, 2014). This describes stealing or even borrowing another person ideas, works along with ideas. In this kind of a way, plagiarism is duplicating on someone else and even switching it as their very own. Plagiarism is the intentional activity, it is also cheating (Amos, 2014). Individuals generally believe that the intellectual property rights for their acknowledgment in our world. This really is the simplest way for the realization.

The aspect of the academic cheating has become much easier in this digital age. The students nowadays copies information electronically from the internet and they are able to insert it to their assignments as if it is their own (Drinan, 2016). Moreover, they are even able to access papers from the internet paper mills. There are papers from any level which could be downloaded in seconds. The center for the Academic Integrity collaborated on the increase of the plagiarism among the students (Drinan, 2016). With regards to the digital age declare that although that the cheating is not the plagiarism, the use of the internet has increased the rate of plagiarism. Individuals could meet plagiarism in many of the spheres.

The academic fraud has not just emerged as an issue in this digital age. The concept of the essay mills as well as the ghostwriters has been around since the 19^th century (Ananou, 2014). The student organization for example the fraternities which are stored academic work in the file banks and they passed old term from the student to the student (Ananou, 2014). Such recycling concept inspired the commercial market, which was beginning of this ghostwriting industry as well as the commercial mills. In this essay, it will examine on the ethics of plagiarism and the essay mills in the digital Age.

Plagiarism in its basic terms is the act of copying other individuals work and passing them of as their own work. This usually violates on the authors right to the ownership of the work that is the fundamental moral right (Drinan, 2016). When it comes to academic circle plagiarism has been regarded to be unethical behavior and any perpetrator should be subject to the sanctions, which include the expulsion from the institution they are study.

How Can Words Be Stolen?

When it comes to the publishing industry, plagiarism is not necessarily a crime. Nonetheless , it really is a serious unethical practice whenever sections of another work of an writer are included in numerous work with absolutely no indication at all of their source , or even when the plagiarized wording has not been put between the quotations marks , or maybe the prevalence of the words have not been cited (Elliott and Spence, 2017). Because of the computers along with internet , it has turns into less difficult presently to appropriate the passages from the work of the other authors, in all the disciplines such as science, journalism and the writing of the projects as well as the work which are undertaken by the students.

The detection of the plagiarism when it comes to the academic works that have been sent particularly to the publication is vital activity when it comes to the editorial process. The use of the computers, and the internet has made it possible to have the tools at ones disposal in order to detect on the plagiarism (Elliott and Spence, 2017).

The ethics of plagiarism is merely the ethics of stealing, when someone steals another person work and pass as their own that stealing, which is very unethical and also illegal. In the legal terms, plagiarism is regarded as the literary theft. In case a person knowingly use another individuals work without giving them credit, then they are committing plagiarism. Moreover, plagiarism also it extends to the ideas of the products, especially when someone take another person idea or even product and pass it as their own work.

When one is accused of plagiarism, they are accused of stealing since they are committing an act of the fraud. One is not only stealing the work, product or even the original ideas of another person, but they are lying about undertaking it afterwards (Baydik and Gasparyan, 2016). Therefore, ethics of plagiarism is merely of stealing. It can become hard especially to the student who have grown up in an online copy and paste culture to seeing plagiarism as an ethical issue.

Somewhat surprisingly to many struggling students who usually plagiarize, they may be student who are under the pressure of achieving success and who may likely engage in the subtler forms of plagiarism. according to researcher, they have identified three situation to which this could most likely occur; one is when the student are under pressure such as when the work is under tight deadline or work which is important for their grades (Exposito and Matteson, 2015). Another way would be when the students are not interested in the work and when the learners they feel that the assignment is unfair to the extent they have no hope of success without cheating.

The Aftermath

According to the study done in 2009 it has found out that a wide range to how serious teens identified numerous type of cheating: whilst two third of the teens regarded the whole copying of the assignment to be completely wrong, just like half felt the same in regards to plagiarizing part of the assignments, and a third felt it was completely wrong to copy homework questions directly from internet (Vie, 2013).

When not seeing some kind of plagiarism as being dishonest, some of the learners may be genuinely confused. An example, even though most could agree that blatantly copying and also pasting whole of the assignment is cheating, they may not realize that the aspect of paraphrasing material as well as stitching it together to look precisely original is also regarded as the plagiarism.

This could be in part since the learners have grown up in copy and paste culture where collaboration as well as sharing is the norm and most of their sources of the data, for instance, Wikipedia they are seen as not having the authors (Exposito and Matteson, 2015). Nonetheless, some of the researchers have also argued that the young students have an entirely different attitude when it comes to the authorship as well as the ownership than the previous generations did (Balbuena and Lamela, 2015). Moreover, others have also felt that the issue is more that the students are not being taught to respect the academic honesty or even the technical skills which are necessary when it comes to synthesizing and citing properly the sources.

People should not believe the myths, the words could be stolen. The US law highlights that the original ideas, which includes the stories, phrases as well as other groups of words could be protected under the US copyright laws (Amos, 2014). This therefore means that in case one steals another person idea along with original content, they have violated on the intellectual property law and that is a crime.  In case an individual protect on their literary work, they have the physical proof that they have committed plagiarism and this could cause them severe consequences.

The aftermath

Once a student has been accused of committing of the plagiarism, the crime need to be proven. The type of the plagiarism in which one will commit would determine on the consequences to which one should deal with. For example, in case one plagiarizes a paper in school, the consequences are not very severe as those which are associated with the stealing another person book or even copyrighted materials (Roberts, 2007). Nonetheless, just because individuals are not taken away to the jail for stealing the work of the other students in school, does not mean that there are not serious consequences from the educational institution (Baydik and Gasparyan, 2016). In case a student plagiarize on their school work, their reputation will be tarnished and they could be even be kicked out of the institution they attend (Walchuk, 2016). When a learner is caught plagiarizing at any educational level they get listed on the academic record which is listed as the ethics offense. When one has ethics offense on their record this could prevent them from being accepted into another institution (Tong, 2017). On the part of the professionals who are convicted of violating on the copyright laws they might face monetary repercussions and their reputation totally destroyed. Any author has the right to sue another professional for stealing part of their work. Plagiarism is not only a serious ethical issue, but also it has become a severe legal repercussion.  

The implementation of the programs as well as policies of promoting academic integrity for example the honor codes, they have been proven to positively impact on the behavior of the students (Skaar and Hammer, 2013). Based on the McCabe and Trevino, the honor code could be quite very successful; nonetheless, an effective honor code should be implemented well and strongly embedded in the culture of the students, which means that just a mere code is not enough to be able to prevent cheating.

Many of the stakeholders usually are convinced that concept of plagiarism is a serious academic problem especially to the institution which demonstrate that they are handling it (Adam, 2016). Some of the institution have the pro-active anti-plagiarism policy, while some they have a reactive policy and other still claim, but they cannot prove, that none of their learners cheat.

The aspect of plagiarism is not a new phenomenon. Copying from the other writers is probably as old as writing itself begun, but not until the advent of the mass-produced writing, it has remained hidden from the gaze of the public (Baydik and Gasparyan, 2016).

Among the most popular forms of the plagiarism by the learners, there are: stealing of the material from another source then transferring it of as their own work; submitting a paper that has already been compiled by somebody else ; duplicating on the parts of the materials from one or maybe more source texts and then providing appropriate documentation but at the same time leaving out the quotation marks, therefore giving the impression that the materials that has been paraphrased rather than the directly quotes (Hansen and Anderson,  2014).

There are few reasons as to why the student could cheat; one of the reason is that of pressure to get high grades, there is the aspect of the parental pressure, pressure to get a job, the desire to excel, there is lack of the responsibility, there is lack of the personal integrity and the perception of the behavior of the peers (Farooq and Haroon, 2016). Thus, the students may cheat since they do not want to be at the disadvantage as comparison to their peers. The studies have shown that men tend to cheat more as compared to the women, as well as young student cheat more than the mature students. Moreover, when the learners know what they are risking when they get caught cheating, they tend to cheat less.

The academic plagiarism in this digital age is not just the mediocre cut and paste mission or perhaps the student cribbing large chunks of the project from a colleague prior essay on the similar subject (Spence and Elliott, 2017). These days the student may check out any given paper or essay mills, which are easily located in the internet and purchase a completed assignment to present it as their very own. The paper mills are not going away soon anytime and they cannot be easily policed or even shut down by the legislation (Ercegovac and Richardson, 2004). These website usually provide services that at an alarming number of the students who are much happy in using them. When managing this kind of the academic deceit it may require hard work from the establishment of the academia as well as renewed commitment to the integrity from the institution communities.

The essay writing services has been all over the internet. Just through a mere quick Google search it can turn up hundreds of thousands of academic writing services on the web, from the major organization to part time independent freelancers (Richards, 2015). These services are not without controversy (Richards, 2015). The essay mills websites more often bring in the aspect of plagiarism concerns as well as ethical questions, particularly for the academic essay writing.

Many of the higher learning institutions usually have honor codes which prohibit the students from purchasing essays, since they argue that it is ethically wrong for one to submit another person work to be graded, whether or not it has been plagiarized or paid for Kong, Goh, Gussen and Turner, 2016). Nonetheless, when it comes to the professional world, it has become common for the busy executive to hiring of the ghost writers to author the experts articles or even the thought leadership papers.

The essay mills have been thriving all throughout the 60s and even 70s. increasingly political as well as community involvement caused the learners to focus more on the social activities which was outside the classroom work rather than spending on their time doing the academic work (Ercegovac and Richardson, 2004). Moreover, the essay mill businesses they have used more and more money in order to advertise their services, which lures the students to purchasing on their academic degreed rather than actual earning it themselves. During that time, there were no plagiarism checkers that existed and most of this work was mainly recycled.

One of the misconception in the essay mills business is that only the foreign students uses the essay writing services since they struggle to write effective English (Quinn, 2014). It is very true that the foreign students may have troubles when it comes to academic language, but almost every individual who has been part of the educational system needs some professionals writing help at one point or another (Ercegovac and Richardson, 2004). It is evident that no matter how one is committed or even talented as a student, it is impossible for them to meet all the requirements of the coursework, and the task of writing is only one which they could delegate.

The essay mills are legal. The argument on this aspect is that the essay mills only sell essays with the intention to inspire the students as well as teach them how an ideal essay should look like. Most of the essay mills usually explicitly advise the learners not to submit the original essay rather use it as an example to draft on their own. Moreover, there is no legal consequences if a student does submit (Rai, Singh and Bakshi, 2016). After all, the customer could decide to do with what they have purchased. Even though there is a given legality on the essay mills, purchasing the essays and submitting them as own work is highly unethical and unaccepted. It could damage on the academic integrity, degree as well as individual critical thinking along with the writing skills (Rogerson and McCarthy, 2017). In case every individual stopped earning their degree, then the world would enter a fraud and skill less workforce since many would only need to purchase the essays and submit as their own. According to the Staffordshire University, Thomas Lancaster, told once the British newspaper ‘The Guardian’ that it is not illegal for the website to provide write model essay, and it is not illegal for one to purchase an essay, but in case, they buy the essay and hand in and get a degree they do not deserve and use that same degree to get a job, then that becomes a fraudulent transaction.

In this digital age it is very difficult to detect whether an essay was bought or self-written. In case an essay mills happens to sell the essay to multiple student, who then submit the essay, the plagiarism in this case will be able to find the duplicates (Pecorari, 2014). Moreover, the judgment of the over the authenticity of the essay of the student remains with the tutors and faculty. 

In this digital age plagiarism has become a serious transgression at every level of education which may even result in the expulsion of the student in case they are caught (Baydik and Gasparyan, 2016). The University professor have been able to know how to regularly run essays through plagiarism software such as CopyScape services. Back in the year 2008, the USA news as well as the world report highlighted that there have been a rise in the text-matching software to be able to catch the content which has been plagiarized. The percentage of the students who admitted to have cheated topped more than fifty percent in 2002 (Baydik and Gasparyan, 2016). There are software companies such as Turntin.com and SafeAssign which are massively built databases to millions of the school papers, books as well as articles and webpages to be able to compare the student’s assignment against them. Some of the professors have also highlighted that using these software that catching plagiarism is as simple as when one Googles few phrases in the student papers which are unattributed.

Conclusion

Cheating in the learning institution always occurs, and as long as the student feel the pressure to produce in elite institution, while at the same time balancing the demand of the course work, jobs as well as burgeoning the social life it is very inevitable that some will succumb to the temptation of cheating (Offutt, 2014). Many of the students are able to plagiarize without being caught. Nonetheless, when someone steal another person work it is not a good idea and it is not ethical. The ethics of plagiarism is just the ethics of stealing. It is important to always cite on the sources and give proper credit to the original authors. If one has not created an idea, it is good to be honest. Paraphrasing is okay provided one does it correctly and cite the original author of the work (Offutt, 2014). On the other aspect paying for an essay from the essay mills may not be the same as copying exams answer of from another student paper, but it is certainly cheating when one submit the original work as their own. Purchasing of the essays in my opinion I believe it is not wrong, if it will only be used as a guide when drafting ones final paper on a given assignment. The only issue is submitting that particular work as your own that become cheating and it is very unethical.

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