Punishment for Plagiarizing - How Much Work Plagiarism is Acceptable?

At most colleges, universities, and workplaces, the policy on plagiarism is that it is not allowed and there are tough punishments for people who are caught doing it. There are many online tools that teachers, professors, and professionals can use to find if there is any copying in writing and the source of the content.

An example of plagiarism would be using someone else's information, ideas, or words knowingly as if you made them up. If even a small percentage of material is copied it is still considered plagiarism. Accidental plagiarism examples would be to forget to quote an author's words, or not including the source where the information came from.

What Are The Consequences Of Plagiarism In The Workplace?

Plagiarism consequences are often related to academics, what people may fail to see is that it is also related to the professional world as well, and it brings serious consequences along with it. Your reputation along with your credibility will come into question and it will have an impact in your profession life, hindering professional development opportunities.

Colleagues may alienate you since now your a now a person that should not be trusted. Not to forget the legal consequences that will be brought on to the company an the potential reputation damage the company will face.

Instances of plagiarism in your field may be related to using someone else's images, taking credit for an idea that is not yours, not listing a source, using blog content, replicating an E-book.

What is academic plagiarism?

The same description applies to all areas of plagiarism, basically meaning any copied work. In the academic world Oxford describes it as "The necessity to acknowledge others' work or ideas applies not only to text, but also to other media, such as computer code, illustrations, graphs etc. It applies equally to published text and data drawn from books and journals, and to unpublished text and data, whether from lectures, theses or other students' essays. You must also attribute text, data, or other resources downloaded from websites."

Online Technology has changed the way we live our lives and the way plagiarism and the Internet are managed. However it has made it easier to get caught plagiarizing in university. Now a days intellectual property and plagiarism go hand in hand not only in schools but also with technology, literature, etc. Plagiarism has been linked to famous and respected people such as Jane Goodall, Joe Biden, Fareed Zakaria, Maureen Dowd, just to name a few.

Types of Plagiarism

There are different types of plagiarism and each has their own punishment. The type that most people think of is direct plagiarism, which is copying someone else's work word for word. This can be avoided by using quotation marks and attribution to the original creator.

One of the other common types is self-plagiarism. This type is harder to detect since it happens most often in an educational setting, so some schools have no policy about this type of copying. Self-plagiarism is copying your past work without noting that it comes from the other work that you have completed.

The last main type is accidental plagiarism. This happens a lot because many students and professionals forget to cite all of their sources or misquote the original source. Accidental plagiarism is very serious and has the same punishment as other types of plagiarism. If you are worried about some stealing your content, you can simply run your work through an online scanning tool and any areas that are plagiarized will come up.

What Do You Do If You Are Accused of Plagiarism?

If you are accused of plagiarism, the first thing that you should do is find out who is accusing you of doing it. You also need to figure out what content is in question. There are tools online that you can use to scan your content and even your whole website to find content that is plagiarized. If the content is online, you should remove the content from your website or wherever it is posted until you find out exactly what is plagiarized and if it is even plagiarism.

Can you go to jail for plagiarism?

Punishment can range from a misdemeanor to a fine or even up to a year in jail. In certain cases it is considered a felony under federal and state law and depending if you made any money from the copy written material, you can receive a fine or up to ten years in jail.