HOW TO PREVENT PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is basically taking information provided by others and presenting it as one’s own, and as such, is a form of theft. It is strongly criticized in academic circles leading students to fail and experts to be named and shamed. This being the case, one of the most important issues discussed with students who are being taught the correct ways of writing a research paper is how to avoid lifting chunks out of a text written by a second party and pasting it into their essay. Considering the strong negative attitude towards plagiarism and the number of programs devised to uncover it, it still takes place for various reasons. These reasons can be broadly categorized as ‘unintentional’ or ‘accidental’ plagiarism and ill-intentioned plagiarism.

Some plagiarism is carried out inadvertently and may seem innocuous but the reasons need to be understood in order to eliminate it. Students who have been through a more authoritarian education system where the focus is memorization and parroting have had no practice with using outside sources to do homework. Any paper they write in high school includes information copied from various sources and cobbled together. What is more, these so called papers are given top marks and the blatant plagiarism is completely ignored. In fact, the concept of plagiarism is never mentioned. Needless to say, these students have never mastered the skill of making notes from a reading text either. On entering university and asked to write a paper, they resort to the same tactics that worked for them up to that point with devastating consequences. The students may protest when their teacher, armed with a red pen, has scratched out most of the paper and peppered it with exclamation marks, that they could not have expressed the concept better themselves. It would be unfair to lay all the blame on the student in this case. What should be done is to first, teach them how to make notes from a reading text and second how to paraphrase. These two activities should not be just introduced and then forgotten about; they should be included in every reading lesson throughout the prep year at universities such as Boğaziçi.  Good writing habits and the accepted way of writing research papers should also be taught in a course open to all students at university in their freshman year. These measures should go hand in hand with a firm stand against plagiarism by the academic staff. In short, universities such as our own should not be too quick to criticize.

Not all plagiarism is carried out unwittingly though; some is completely ill-intentioned. Writing a research paper is a time consuming and cognitively challenging task, which is why some may wish to take the easy way out. There are plenty of websites cropping up on the internet which offer to write research papers for a price but it is far easier and cheaper to just mix and match information from previously written material and present it to the teacher. Just like the sites for writing papers, there are also programs that pinpoint plagiarism, which the teachers have access to so most papers of the latter kind are weeded out pretty quickly. There is no excuse for this kind of plagiarism, and it should be criticized in the harshest terms. A concerted effort to come down hard on all plagiarism of this kind will eventually put an end to the problem.

In conclusion, it goes without saying that stealing whole chunks of another person’s work and claiming it as one’s own is wrong and should not be tolerated. However, allowance should be made for students who, for no fault of their own, have not been given the opportunity to learn not to plagiarize. They should be brought up to speed as quickly as possible. That all plagiarism, no matter what the reason, should be severely punished goes without saying however.