Posted: September 13th, 2017

Types of Plagiarism

Plagiarism.

The major question is, what is plagiarism and how can we avoid it? This is simple; plagiarism is taking someone else’s work and passing it off as one’s own. It can be a phrase, a song, a research work or any piece of work that is not yours and failing to acknowledge the owner.

It has been around for a very long time and it is not done by only high school students but in every profession, teachers can plagiarize, lawyers, doctors, scientists, this is almost everywhere and some can plagiarize without noticing that they are plagiarizing. Therefore it is important you learn the different types of plagiarism and how they occur.

We have three common types of plagiarism and these are:

1. Patchwork plagiarism.
2. Global plagiarism.
3. Accidental plagiarism.

Patchwork plagiarism.

This is a type of plagiarism where someone takes work from different sources, select a few paragraphs from those different sources then put them together as one piece of work without mention the sources or acknowledging the owners and without changing even a single word. Academically this is dishonest and unethical; the person responsible should be punished.

Global plagiarism.

This is another type of plagiarism where someone just presents another person piece of work as is own, the whole piece of work without changing anything. You just copy paste that work from another source and present it that way. This is bad as it can lead to suspension or lose of job, which is if it’s at professional level.

Accidental plagiarism.

This type of plagiarism occurs when a person unintentionally neglect to acknowledge a borrowed piece of work or forget to quote it as someone else work even though he/she had an intention of doing so. This is not an excuse and this type of plagiarism is just treated as any other plagiarism and it can lead to suspension or worse.

As you do your research or project, you should be so careful about this factor and the only way to avoid this type of crime is by simply acknowledging the source of your information or quoting the owner is it’s a phrase. Be honest and avoid this type of shame.