Essay on Plagiarism: Risks, Prevention, and Academic Integrity

This essay examines the concept of plagiarism, defining it as the wrongful appropriation of someone else's work or ideas without consent. It highlights the author's experience in an administrative role where they encounter numerous plagiarized works, particularly in sociology PhD proposals. The essay details various forms of plagiarism, including direct, self, mosaic, and accidental plagiarism, and outlines the severe consequences such as damage to reputation, professional setbacks, and academic penalties. The essay provides practical tips for avoiding plagiarism, such as using proper citations and paraphrasing techniques. It also includes references to relevant academic literature on the topic.

Running head: PLAGIARISM
PLAGIARISM
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Defining Plagiarism:
In a simple understanding, the concept of Plagiarism refers to using someone else’s ideas
and or their concepts and using it for personal gains or personal accomplishments. To
conceptualize the concept it can be stated, that, the wrongful appropriation of someone else’s
work, or stealing and using the concepts and ideas of someone else’s works without their consent
or permission are essentially regarded as plagiarism. This is a very common activity and usually
takes place in the publication houses, where people often steal their ideas, and thoughts and the
organization and formation of their language (Barrón-Cedeño et al., 2013). It is completely
against the ethics of the individuals and is considered to be academic dishonesty. Therefore,
there are certain penalties, like the expulsion form the organization, and substantial fines are
practiced, in order to promote and ensure the graveness of the act.
The Most Tempting Situation for Employing Plagiarism:
I am working in the administrative department of the teachers association, and my role is
to talk and initiate the process of the PHD proposals that are uploaded or forwarded by the
applicants or the professors. Therefore, I come across a huge number of data and diversified
works by different people. My specialization was in sociology, therefore, the works and the
theories that I come across are all in the same filed. Therefore, I have come across a number of
studies and a number of personal works which are basically plagiarized. Sociology is a
diversified filed and a number of researches are currently going on, and the researchers are trying
to incorporate the discourse of sociology into other discourses as well, for example, the
mathematics, astrophysics and the like. Therefore, I have come across a number of studies, and
research proposals, and at the same time, I have come across PHD proposals which are

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completely plagiarized. One of the most interesting aspect is that, the practice of plagiarism is
mostly found among the professors, who have already completed their PHDs, and now aspiring
for more numbers of PHDs.
Risks of Plagiarism:
There are a number of forms of plagiarism, like, the Direct Plagiarism, Self- Plagiarism,
Mosaic Plagiarism, and the Accidental Plagiarism. The first one denotes the word t word copy of
another work, and the second one denotes, plagiarizing one’s own works. The Mosaic Plagiarism
refers to the unintentional forms of Plagiarism which takes place if one dies not use the quotation
marks, and the last one denotes when two ideas or concepts clash amongst each other (Pecorari,
D., & Petrić, 2014). Therefore, such activities have certain serious consequences like,
 It destroys the reputation of the student or the professor or the person who is involved in
certain activities.
 It destroy the professional reputation of the same as well, and the person may not be able
to get a job in any other organization or in any other companies.
 It also destroys the academic reputation of the person, and it is mostly applicable for the
students and the professors. It is often noticed that the professors are not allowed to get in
the libraries of the organizations and the students involved in certain acts are not allowed
to continue with their further studies (Gipp, 2014).
Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism:
The ways, which can enable the students or the teachers to avoid plagiarism are,
 Using proper citations. If one is collecting the information from somewhere, then they
must acknowledge the contribution of the resources by proper citations.

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 Paraphrasing is another effective and important tool. It refers to the modification of
language and the modification of organization of the patterning or the presentation of the
work. This reduces the chances for being caught for plagiarism to a certain extent
(Angélil-Carter, 2014).

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References:
Angélil-Carter, S. (2014). Stolen language?: Plagiarism in writing. Routledge.
Barrón-Cedeño, A., Vila, M., Martí, M. A., & Rosso, P. (2013). Plagiarism meets paraphrasing:
Insights for the next generation in automatic plagiarism detection. Computational
Linguistics, 39(4), 917-947.
Gipp, B. (2014). Citation-based plagiarism detection. In Citation-based plagiarism detection (pp.
57-88). Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden.
Pecorari, D., & Petrić, B. (2014). Plagiarism in second-language writing. Language
Teaching, 47(3), 269-302.

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