Recognizing Plagiarism

Recognizing plagiarism

Recognizing and Avoiding Plagiarism

by

DBA Student, Jan Caisango RN, MSN, MBA

DDBA 8005 Foundations for Doctoral Business Administration Studies

Dr. Robert Miller

June 2011

Introduction:

Plagiarism involves using other people’s words or ideas as one’s own. However, improper citations and paraphrasing that is too similar to the original source is also plagiarism. Plagiarism can be done without intent or malice. Nonetheless, all acts of plagiarism face consequences.

Evaluation of Student Passage:

The passage written by a student hoping to use the article by Crossen (1994), as a reference without plagiarism, has in actuality plagiarized the source. The two sentences, “But it is hard to know if conflict of interest between doctors, researchers, and the drug company stockholders has tainted the results” and “ Biomedical researchers incorporate strict rules of science into their work which is examined by peers” are plagiarized from the original source. This accidental plagiarism could have been avoided by proper citation of the source.

The two sentence identified as plagiarism could have been written using paraphrasing and citations, crediting the original author with their ideas and content. The passage could have been written:

“Crossen (1994) argued that it is extremely difficult to determine if biomedical research has been tainted by conflict of interest. Biomedical researchers face strict peer review of their studies. Yet the resulting information can be warped for five reasons: Ending a study prematurely, failure to publish negative results, publishing results prematurely, skimming over or ignoring drawbacks, and “buffering” the results by casting them in the best light (Crossen, 1994).”

Conclusion:

Walker (2008), suggest that students are unaware that the minimal changing of a word or two from the original source constitutes an act of plagiarism. Academic plagiarism, intentional, or accidental, can lead to serious...