PROV 504 Writing Sample – Plagiarism Research Paper
Plagiarism Research Paper: Defining Intellectual Property, Academic Honesty, and Plagiarism as Western Concepts
Alfredo Any
Electrical Engineering, Volgenau School of Engineering
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia, United States
e-mail: aany@gmu.edu
While researching three articles written about academic integrity, intellectual property, and plagiarism, I realized that each of the authors define those terms in various ways. There is an author who describes them by blaming one particular student. There is also an author who opposes plagiarism by describing what intellectual property and academic honesty are, and giving advices about how to avoid this plagiarism. However, they all explain all of those terms in a same picture. They conclude that plagiarism is bad and risky, and can be avoided by doing proper things that should be done by scholarly students. My purpose in this paper is to define intellectual property, academic honesty, and plagiarism as they are illustrated in Western conceptions.
Intellectual property, as it is defined by [1], is represented by “words, ideas, and research, [which] are the main forms of currency in academic life”. It is an extremely vital thing for academic people. They definitely do not want their own thoughts and knowledge stolen and used irresponsibly by other people. Intellectual property is just as precious as gold and diamond for people in this world. It is highly valued for them and considered as the most honorable thing in their academic lives. It is also connected to the term “academic integrity.” Academic integrity is the ethical code among scholars which has to be obeyed in all the things related to academia. Each one of students in United States should know all information about academic integrity and how it has become so important in schools and universities, including international students who have not gotten used to education in Western conceptions. That is the reason why all the international students who just came into United States are taught about these things comprehensively in their first semester. It is defined as an “academic code of honor”, and has to be acknowledged by all of scholarly students [2].
One way to break the rules of academic integrity and to steal the intellectual properties is to plagiarize. Plagiarism is an attitude of stealing other people’s ideas (in this case they are intellectual properties) and turned into someone else’s without the authority of the owners of the ideas. In United States, plagiarism is strictly prohibited among students. They are restricted to do it even though it was unintentional. It is very risky to plagiarize, because it could cause a student to be dropped out of a school or a university. Plagiarizing means you are no longer a scholar, because you have broken the most important code of ethics in Western conceptions. According to [3], it is noted that plagiarism is not only a dishonest sign; it is nonetheless a sign of students’ satisfaction with their limitations.
According to [2], “students can recite the guideline for giving credit to anything that is not common knowledge”. From this statement, I figure that general information may not be cited. Although citations are really important in academic paper, scholarly students do not need to cite or quote every single word or phrase that everyone already knows. This is one of many ways to know how to avoid plagiarism.
On the other hand, there are some strategies that are provided by [1]. According to [1], “completing a research paper requires some special strategies.” The most useful strategies that can be used for us students are also mentioned in [2], which are: the strategies to begin the task early, begin to narrow and focus research questions, strategically search for materials, and always compose the research paper in our own voice.
I came from Indonesia, and I got my Bachelor’s degree in my home country. I realized that there is a huge difference between education in Western countries and education in my home country. Students tend to find resources from the internet, and started to cite it, without using citations or quotations or anything that describe the owners of the resources, to complete the assignments. We knew that it was wrong to be done. However, our professors did not concern about it, therefore we kept doing it on each of our assignments. It has been made into some kind of habit within our major. It was already a mistake in our educational system, because we were never taught about plagiarism and how to avoid it appropriately. It maybe because in my culture, we do not see knowledge as a part of belonging to an individual, nevertheless see it as part of the collective of other knowledge. I do agree with educational system in United States, because it teaches us about being honest not only in academic matters, but also in our lives. The education in Western countries, especially United States, makes us better humans for the future.
(Word count: 784 words)
REFERENCES
[1] K. Hjortshoj. “Theft, fraud, and the loss of voice.” Transition to College Writing, pp.
172-184, 2001.
[2] S. Blum. “Academic integrity and student plagiarism: A question of education, not ethics.” Chronicle of Higher
Education, pp. A35, 2009.
[3] J. Malesic. “How dumb do they think we are?” Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. C2-C3, 2006.