Plagiarism

[Gnisy]

Can anyone tell me what constitutes plagiarism in terms of book content? Would appreciate a general view of what is acceptable or rather unacceptable when it comes to copying content out of another book. Thanks

[islandgirl]

I think you need to credit your source to avoid claims of plagiarism and clearly show the extract as a quote.

[Octavius]

Plagiarism means using another's work without giving credit. You must put others' words in quotation marks and cite your source(s) and must give citations when using others' ideas, even if those ideas are paraphrased in your own words.

"Work" includes original ideas, strategies, and research, art, graphics, computer programs, music, and other creative expression. The work may consist of writing, charts, pictures, graphs, diagrams, data, websites, or other communication or recording media, and may include "sentences, phrases, and innovative terminology, formatting, or other representations.

The term "source" includes published works (books, magazines, newspapers, websites, plays, movies, photos, paintings, and textbooks) and unpublished sources (class lectures or notes, handouts, speeches, other students' papers, or material from a research service).

The use of another person�s work does not constitute plagiarism unless we present that work as our own.

[gary baldy]

Octavius is spot on! For what it's worth my less scholarly interpretation is this: I never saw a problem in lifting big chunks out of other peoples work but only if your fully reference. Unless you are doing a PHD where lots of original research is needed it is expected for you to reference lots of other works. The skill is to incorporate the references into a cohesive argument of your own. You could write the majority of an essay using sources but if you write it up right and what you add makes sense ( and of course you fully footnote everything) it isnt plagiarism. Plus, lots of references show you have done lots of reading around the subject - getting you more brownie points.

[Gnisy]

Ya well, the content I'm mentioning here needs no sources nor references. It's a school book. It should be the writer's own work in the first place but as luck would have it, I happen to read through a published book during my lunchtime and found the content somewhat familiar to the script that the writer has sent me earlier. At first, I thought it must be a coincidence but later on I noticed that the whole comprehension was based on the content in that book! The writer shortened or lengthened the content so it won't be 100% like the one in the book, but I estimate the similarities to be about 85%.

So I'm asking if it is plagiarism, cause if it is then I need to inform my supervisor about it to seek advice on further action.

[Octavius]

Has the writer made any mention of the original book as a source? Since the original book I would assume contains original ideas (unless there are some source references in that book) then if not, this sounds like plagiarism. If your writer is examining the original ideas and adding their own interpretations of the original source, or questioning the work - the source should still be credited at least in a bibliography. Where the original work is not mentioned it would lead me to suspect that the author is trying to hide the fact that their work may not be original.

[Gnisy]

No, there were no referred sources. I found out through coincidence.

In one particular paragraph there were four sentences, in that, there are 4 full stops. The original write-up has 5 sentences. All ideas were presented in the same sequence, didn't even bother to switch the words with synonyms in order to keep the original meaning. If it weren't because of the sequence connectors, I'd say it is the same exact paragraph.

Let's put it this way, if I was paying for the article, I'd want my money back.

[Octavius]

Plagiarism.

[gary baldy]

Bang to rights! - Busted!

[Hamish]

There are some sites, not sure of a page at the moment, wich will analyse text and tell you of the match to give a quantitave opinion of similarity.

[Gnisy]

Try copyscape.com. Very handy. You enter the url of the page you want to check and voila, the site will generate a list of sites where the words 'coincide' with the words in the tested url. If it is purely 'unplagiarised' then the site will return without any list.