Plagiarism and its negative effects are unjust, lack moral and can have serious consequences on both the student and the authors.
Plagiarism has become what some are calling a trend due to the influence the internet has had on students, high school and college as well as some educators. Although plagiarism has been playing a negative roll in academics for a considerable amount of time, access to internet cutting and pasting has made it a more talks about subject.
While reading the online article on plagiarism, Lines blurred for students in a digital age (Gabriel, 2010) I learned of a student that was reprimanded for copying from Wikipedia. The argument the student gave in defense of his ignorance to what he had done, was that the information he obtained had collective writers and was common/public knowledge. What makes this unjustifiable is the ideas were not his own. Although it may have appeared the student did not have knowledge of plagiarism, he was still reprimanded for plagiarizing. What he did was unjustifiable and unfair to the collective writers and he should have been held responsible.
Many institutions enforce a policies apposing plagiarism. These policies protect the authors and encourage students to be more creative, (Gabriel, 2010) relaxing plagiarism standards “does not foster creativity it fosters laziness”.
Plagiarism in academia by Syed Shahabuddin has a very strict approach to plagiarism. Shahabuddin speaks strongly about plagiarism and seems to have been personally effected by the act of plagiarism. Shahabuddin also references a lot of authors himself but it is evident he values the theory of citation. Shahabuddin makes a point when citing (Harrell C. (2009) chose an online plagiarism detector to check for plagiarism, this can help students avoid plagiarism and its consequences.
As stated in the online article, plagiarism lines blurred for students in the digital age,(Gabriel ,2010) If you are taught how to closely read sources and synthesize them into your own words and original argument in high you will not want to knowingly plagiarize. I feel this to be true and in conjunction with a plagiarism detector students can become more open to using the own ideas. This combination can also give students the knowledge to apply the citation to credit authors properly and avoid plagiarism.
Both Shahabuddin and Gabriel agree that, (Shahabuddin (2009) plagiarism is unethical and maybe illegal in some cases and there is no justification in it. Plagiarism has many different levels. Plagiarism can have effects on a professional level as well. Work associates can take credit from each other in order to reap the benefits for themselves. The music industry is also known for what can be consider plagiarism; music has been used from original artist without proper credit given or compensation.
In conclusion:The line between quoting an author, referring and plagiarism are very thin, but the line can be drawn by citation, using a plagiarism detector and relying on one’s own creativity. There will always be some individuals that will unfortunately unknowingly plagiarize and unfortunately will have to pay the consequences. There will also be a select few that are willingly going to practice this deceit. (Shahabuddin (2009) ignoring plagiarism means condoning unethical behavior.