"The Most Discriminating Plagiarist": The Unkindest Cut (and Paste) of All (original) (raw)

Plagium: an archaic and anomalous crime

The Juridical review, 2016

Questions, in light of the continued existence of the offence of plagium in Scotland, involving the aggravated theft of pre-pubescent children, whether children are considered as 'mere things' under Scots law. Examines the history of the crime of plagium and looks at how it is connected to the Scottish notion of 'property'.

Redefining plagiarism; A friend or a foe

Plagiarism is a universal phenomenon, not strictly restricted to medical writing, but encompassing almost all fields of life. Over a period of time, it has become customary to talk very loudly about it and even condemn it as a sin. A review of the past and present scientific knowledge as well as literature confirms that plagiarism has been and is still in wide practice in developed as well as undeveloped countries. The availability of scientific knowledge on the internet has made it easier to plagiarise as well as to identify plagiarized material. On the other hand much of the research methodology, reviews, discussion parts of original articles and even larger books and monographs do contain parts of copied material from already published material. This editorial review the prevalence of and the measures to control the plagiarism, and stresses a need to draw fresh lines in between good and bad plagiarism.

Plagiarism in three acts

International Journal For Educational Integrity, 2012

Three brief studies are conducted regarding plagiarism in the age of the internet. The first identifies the disparity between cited and un-cited examples of brief media catchphrases used on the internet. The second uses a thesaurus to generate alternative wordings of established definitions and tests them for legibility. The third asks respondents to spontaneously generate definitions for common concepts and uses Google to test those spontaneous definitions for plagiarism. In all three cases, results are such that they call into question current views on the nature of plagiarism itself.

We know it when we see it” is not good enough: toward a standard definition of plagiarism that transcends theft, fraud, and copyright

2009

Many of the assumptions that inform the ways we respond to issues of plagiarism are based in laws and traditions that pertain to stealing or to copyright. Laws about stealing, however, assume key concepts that are at odds with the conceptual realities of plagiarism. The notion of taking something, for instance, carries with it the concomitant idea that the rightful owner is deprived of the use of that thing. Laws about copyright are similarly derived from the notion of a physical text being duplicated to make additional (physical) copies to be sold, implying that if copyright is violated, the rightful owner suffers (financial) harm. Neither set of laws appropriately addresses plagiarism, however, which can occur without depriving the author/owner of the work or the right to profit from it. This paper will differentiate the elements of plagiarism from those of theft and copyright violations, and attempt to define plagiarism in terms that accurately describe its essential elements.