It’s often said that if you steal from one person’s work, it’s plagiarism, but if you steal from lots of people it’s “research”. Very droll, but plagiarism is a serious business. As well as being potentially economically damaging to the victim, it is demeaning for the perpetrator – although, like all thieves, they probably don’t realise it.
This is a slightly sensitive topic for me at the moment because Elaine discovered, through using the Plagium website, that one of my articles has been ripped off. Not only does it appear on another website, it has also been attributed to someone else. I have emailed the person in charge of the website to ask them to remove the article immediately. As they haven’t responded, I’ll take it a step further. Once there has been an outcome one way or another I’ll have more to report.
In the meantime, here is an interesting infographic which has some practical information about dealing with plagiarism in education, including online tools that are available.
You may also be interested in a couple of other articles I wrote on this subject:
Three cheers for anti-plagiarism software, in which I reflect on how anti-plagiarism software might have benefitted me when I was a school student.
Is Plagiarism Really a Problem?, in which I wonder aloud whether plagiarism is really a problem in the light of some research findings reported in the press.
Anyway, here’s that infographic:
Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics