What role does plagiarism play in academic work, what makes it so problematic and what causes it?

Ideas and arguments are of great importance in academia. Some of them shape the development of entire subject areas and go down in history with the names of their authors and inventors. We are not only talking about new technologies and procedures, experimental designs and proofs, theories and hypotheses. Individual concepts, terminology and even specific formulations are also of significant value and can influence the discourse of the current and future generations.

That’s why it’s extremely important in academia to know the original source of an idea or expression. It’s not just a matter of sharing the credit, but it is also a matter of using, analyzing and evaluating an idea in context. And this is how we avoid plagiarism.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is committed if a person (knowingly or unknowingly) uses someone else’s ideas or expressions without citing the source. Plagiarism is thus “the complete or partial adoption of another’s work without stating the source or author”.1 Or, more generally, “plagiarism is the unauthorized adoption of another’s intellectual work, the “theft” of intellectual property”.² Intellectual property can take many different forms in academia: Inventions and discoveries, research methods and data collection are just as important as original research questions and conclusions. The protection of intellectual property in academia is guaranteed by intellectual property law (esp. copyright) and by good scholarly practice.³ Theft of such intellectual property in the form of plagiarism can occur via various media (images, videos, music)⁴ and can have entirely different causes and reasons.

Causes of plagiarism

The decisive factor is whether the plagiarism was intentional or was committed unintentionally/unknowingly. Let us first examine the case in which the paper is not an independent creation – in other words, the author is aware that the work of others has not been acknowledged. In such cases, a cause can be insecurity; that is, lack of confidence in one’s own abilities, knowledge and skills.⁵ Another reason for intentional plagiarism can be time pressure; for example, if too little time was allowed to complete an academic paper. Finally, intentional plagiarism can occur when a course or task seems unimportant to students or when faking the assignment is too easy. If, in addition, the students do not have any fear of the consequences if plagiarism is discovered (e.g., they know that such misconduct is rarely punished), the temptation can be very strong.⁶ The wide array of internet sources and publicly accessible online libraries and databases can also create the illusion that all the material available online is of little value and lacks legal protection.⁷

Unintentional plagiarism generally has entirely different causes. Despite working with the best of intentions, errors can occur from lack of knowledge or due to a misunderstanding. Various reasons can account for a lack of knowledge; for example, lecturers sometimes make faulty assumptions about the prior knowledge and experience of new students and assume too much knowledge. Transitions between levels of education (secondary school vs. higher education), fields of activity (government vs. academia), disciplines or cultures also play an important role, since the conventions for citing sources can vary significantly depending on context.⁸

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Literatur

¹ Definition Lehrstuhl Haas, Rechtswissenschaftliches Institut der Universität Zürich. Retrieved from:
www.ius.uzh.ch/de/staff/professorships/alphabetical/haas/Universitaetsanwalt/Plagiate.html (02.12.2021).

² Fröhlich, Gerhard (2006). Plagiate und unethische Autorenschaften. In: Information – Wissenschaft und Praxis, 57 (2), S. 81–89. Retrieved from: http://eprints.rclis.org/7416/1/plagiate.pdf (02.12.2021).

³ Vgl. Kaufmann, Danielle (2010). Vortrag Plagiarismus, UB Basel. Retrieved from: https://lawlibraries.ch/docs/tagung2010/plagiarismus.pdf (02.12.2021).

⁴ Vgl. What is Plagiarism (2017). Retrieved from: https://www.plagiarism.org/article/what-is-plagiarism (02.12.2021).

⁵ Vgl. What Does Confidence Have to do with Plagiarism? How Believing in Yourself Helps You Be Original (2017). Retrieved from: https://www.plagiarism.org/blog/2017/11/16/what-does-confidence-have-to-do-with-plagiarism (02.12.2021).

⁶ Vgl. Akademische Integrität im digitalen Umfeld: Warum Studenten Plagiieren. Retrieved from: https://www.turnitin.com/de/papers/akademische-integritat-im-digitalen-umfeld-warum-studenten-plagiieren (02.12.2021).

⁷ Vgl. «Wieso, im Internet ist doch alles frei?» Copy & Paste-Mentalität unter Lernenden. In: UNESCO heute, Zeitschrift der Deutschen UNESCO-Kommission, 55. Volume, edition 1/2008 (1st half year), special issue: Wissen im Web, pp. 54-56.

⁸ Vgl. Akademische Integrität im digitalen Umfeld: Warum Studenten Plagiieren. Retrieved from: https://www.turnitin.com/de/papers/akademische-integritat-im-digitalen-umfeld-warum-studenten-plagiieren (02.12.2021). Vgl. ausserdem Causes of Plagiarism. What are the Causes of Plagiarism and the Failure to Use and Document Sources Appropriately? Kent State University, Council of Writing Program Administrators. Abgerufen unter: http://www.kent.edu/writingcommons/causes-plagiarism (02.12.2021).