What is Plagiarism?

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to “plagiarize” means

to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own

to use (another’s production) without crediting the source

to commit literary theft

to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

Plagiarism.org describes the plagiarism as: An act of fraud, that involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterward.

Should the students be worried about Plagiarism?

Yes. When the students submit a report/paper for a course project, submit a paper to a journal or conference or submit their Thesis/Dissertation they should check it for Plagiarism.

Consequences of plagiarism

If you are not sure about the consequences of plagiarism, just consider the following:

Plagiarism can result you fail a course or get expelled from it.
Plagiarism can ban you from publishing future articles in a journal.
Plagiarism can result in expulsion from your Job or University.
Plagiarism can result in legal action.

Intentional and unintentional plagiarism

Some examples of plagiarism that may be unintentional:

Paraphrasing poorly: changing a few words without changing the sentence structure of the original, or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
Paraphrasing poorly: using words from the original that aren’t part of one’s vocabulary.
Quoting poorly: putting quotation marks around part of a quotation but not around all of it, or putting quotation marks around a passage that is partly paraphrased and partly quoted.
Citing poorly: omitting an occasional citation or citing inaccurately.

How the to detect Plagiarism?

There are tools and Software that Professors, Teacher, Universities or Publisher use to check the Plagiarism. It consist of searching Web Contents to find consecutive words in a text. Usually 5 to several consecutive word are considered as Plagiarism.

You can simply search for Plagiarism detection tools or Plagiarism check online. FREE Plagiarism Detection Tools For Teachers:

http://elearningindustry.com/top-10-free-plagiarism-detection-tools-for-teachers