Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.[1][2][3] Although precise definitions vary depending on the institution,[4] in many countries and cultures plagiarism is considered a violation of academic integrity and journalistic ethics, as well as social norms around learning, teaching, research, fairness, respect, and responsibility.[5] As such, a person or entity that is determined to have committed plagiarism is often subject to various punishments or sanctions, such as suspension, expulsion from school[6] or work,[7] fines,[8][9] imprisonment,[10][11] and other penalties.
For other uses, see Plagiarism (disambiguation).
Plagiarism is typically not in itself a crime, but like counterfeiting, fraud can be punished in a court[12][13] for prejudices caused by copyright infringement,[14][15] violation of moral rights,[16] or torts. In academia and in industry, it is a serious ethical offense.[17][18] Plagiarism and copyright infringement overlap to a considerable extent, but they are not equivalent concepts,[19] and although many types of plagiarism may not meet the legal requirements in copyright law as adjudicated by courts, they still constitute the passing-off of another's work as one's own, and thus plagiarism.
Not all cultures and countries hold the same beliefs about personal ownership of language or ideas. In some cultures, the reiteration of another professional's work can be a sign of respect or flattery towards the person whose work is reiterated.[20] Students who are from such countries and cultures and who move to the United States or other Western countries (where plagiarism is frowned upon) may find the transition difficult.[21]
Etymology and ancient history[edit]
In the 1st century, the use of the Latin word plagiarius (literally "kidnapper") to denote copying someone else's creative work was pioneered by the Roman poet Martial, who complained that another poet had "kidnapped his verses". Plagiary, a derivative of plagiarus, was introduced into English in 1601 by dramatist Ben Jonson during the Jacobean Era to describe someone guilty of literary theft.[17][22] The derived form plagiarism was introduced into English around 1620.[23] The Latin words plagiārius ("kidnapper") and plagium ("kidnapping") have the same root: plaga ("snare", "net"), which is based on the Indo-European root *-plak, "to weave".
It is frequently claimed that people in antiquity had no concept of plagiarism, or at least did not condemn it, and that it only came to be seen as immoral much later, anywhere from the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th century to the Romantic movement in the 18th century. Although people in antiquity found detecting plagiarism difficult due to long travel times and scarcity of literate persons, there are a considerable number of pre-Enlightenment authors who accused others of plagiarism and considered it distasteful and scandalous, including historians Polybius and Pliny the Elder.[24] The 3rd century Greek work Lives of the Eminent Philosophers mentions that Heraclides Ponticus was accused of plagiarizing (κλέψαντα αὐτὸν) a treatise on Heliod and Homer.[25][26] In Vitruvius's 7th book, he acknowledged his debt to earlier writers and attributed them, and he also included a strong condemnation of plagiarism: "Earlier writers deserve our thanks, those, on the contrary, deserve our reproaches, who steal the writings of such men and publish them as their own. Those, who depend in their writings, not on their own ideas, but who enviously do wrong to the works of others and boast of it, deserve not merely to be blamed, but to be sentenced to actual punishment for their wicked course of life."[27] Vitruvius went on to claim that "such things did not pass without strict chastisement".[27] He recounted a story where the well-read Aristophanes of Byzantium judged a poetry competition and caught most of the contestants plagiarizing others' poems as their own. The king ordered the plagiarizers to confess that they were thieves, and they were condemned to disgrace. Although the story may be apocryphal, it shows that Vitruvius personally considered plagiarism reprehensible.[28]
In journalism[edit]
In journalism, plagiarism is considered a breach of journalistic ethics, and reporters caught plagiarizing typically face disciplinary measures ranging from suspension to termination of employment.[94] Some individuals caught plagiarizing in academic or journalistic contexts claim that they plagiarized unintentionally, by failing to include quotations or to give the appropriate citation. Although plagiarism in scholarship and journalism has a centuries-old history, the development of the Internet, where articles appear as electronic text, has made the physical act of copying the work of others much easier.[95]
Because journalism relies on the public trust, a reporter's failure to acknowledge sources honestly undercuts a newspaper or television news show's integrity and undermines its credibility. Journalists accused of plagiarism are often suspended from their reporting tasks while the charges are being investigated by the news organization.[96]
In other contexts[edit]
Organizational publications[edit]
Plagiarism is presumably not an issue when organizations issue collective unsigned works since they do not assign credit for originality to particular people. For example, the American Historical Association's "Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct" (2005) regarding textbooks and reference books stated that, because textbooks and encyclopedias are summaries of other scholars' work, they are not bound by the same exacting standards of attribution as original research and may be allowed a greater "extent of dependence" on other works.[130] However, even such a book does not make use of words, phrases, or paragraphs from another text or follow too closely the other text's arrangement and organization, and the authors of such texts are also expected to "acknowledge the sources of recent or distinctive findings and interpretations, those not yet a part of the common understanding of the profession."[130]
Impact of artificial intelligence[edit]
The increase in plagiarism can also be attributed to developments in artificial intelligence.[133] The emergence of large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3 and ChatGPT raised global discussion about the impact of artificial intelligence on writing and plagiarism. One such innovation is the GPT-2 model, which is capable of generating coherent paragraphs and achieving high scores on various language modeling assessments. It can also perform basic tasks such as reading comprehension, machine translation, question answering, and summarization.[133] Currently, detectors of AI language such as GPTZero have been introduced to cope with this problem. The emergence of large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3 and ChatGPT raised global discussion about the impact of artificial intelligence on writing and plagiarism. Noam Chomsky called ChatGPT "nothing more than high-tech plagiarism".[134] In contrast, others have proposed that "the essay is dead",[135] declaring that artificial intelligence will transform academia and society. One scholar of plagiarism, Eaton, proposed the idea of a postplagiarism era,[136] in which human and artificial-intelligence hybrid writing become normal. The impact of artificial intelligence on plagiarism has yet to be fully understood.
The widespread use of artificial intelligence brings a lot of troubles to colleges.[137] With ChatGPT's strong database and convenience, students who see much of the work assigned by professors as just busy work will complete the work via artificial intelligence. However, instead of banning the use of ChatGPT in academic study, some have suggested that professors use tools like ChatGPT in their teaching to create outlines, individualized lesson plans, and ideas for classroom activities.[137]
