Unintentional Plagiarism

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Date: July 18, 2018

What Is Unintentional Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is not only the cheating of the thoughts and the ideas of the other people but it is an act of stealing the intellectual property. There are various reasons for plagiarism, and there are different views about the reasons for plagiarism. Understanding the reasons for plagiarism is very important to avoid it. In most cases, people make excuses that they do not even know about the concept of plagiarism, and they unintentionally fall into this act. But the issue arises to distinguish between the aware and the unaware criminals. Such kind of plagiarism is known as unintentional plagiarism, as in this case, the person is unaware of the plagiarism.

Types of Unintentional Plagiarism

There are many people who, when becoming accused of plagiarism, claim to suffer from unintentional plagiarism. Therefore, making such people aware of unintentional plagiarism is very necessary because they can confuse the two terms plagiarism and research. In fact, there are some types of unintentional plagiarism, which are as follows:

1. Citation Confusion

One of the most common types of unintentional plagiarism is citation confusion. in this type, the writer is unaware of the rules of proper referencing and citation; the complete link is not given for the source, and this thing makes it difficult to trace the path of the source. Forgetting the proper information on the citation procedure there are various websites which can be consulted.

2. Paraphrasing

Most people go for unintentional plagiarism with paraphrasing, in which they only get different sentences from various websites and then make a new sentence but with the old and copied idea. It is very hard for the authorities to identify the unintentional plagiarism.

3. Word Substitution

In this unintentional plagiarism, the writer just changes the wording of the written material, but the idea and the thought are totally copied.

Avoiding Unintentional Plagiarism To avoid unintentional plagiarism; is very difficult to follow because of the various types of unintentional plagiarism. But still, the awareness can be enhanced to achieve this aim. Some of the students merge their views with the views of other people, and after some time, they get accused of unintentional plagiarism. This can be avoided by clearly depicting the arguments of others with proper references and then coming up with your own conclusion. The instructors can also guide the students in making the notes and also help them in properly quoting the quotations during the lecture. During the meetings with the students on the research papers and the projects, the teacher can show an interest in knowing the sources so that students can be aware of the sensitivity of the issue. Some references can also be provided by the teachers themselves to ensure the reduction of unintentional plagiarism. There are also some ways to show up the unknown cities, and for this, the instructor can help the students.

Unintentional plagiarism also sometimes saves those people who initially utilized these means. Therefore, to reduce plagiarism at a higher level, the need of time is to block all of the means of plagiarism. Instructors can do one of the best things in that they can explain to the students the risks involved in plagiarism, like the copyright laws. In this way, to a great extent, they can feel the fear of disobedience to these laws. If all of the above procedures are followed, then the threat to the insecurity of intellectual property can be removed. There are various other aspects of unintentional plagiarism which you can learn from various websites available on the Internet.