Issues of Plagiarism in Academics: An Overview

Abstract

In academics, plagiarism is considered as the greatest moral offense that anybody can commit intentionally or unintentionally. Impact of Internet has made easy to retrieve needed information anywhere and anytime and also its role in academic environment has resulted in proliferation of plagiarized works. Generally, it is well thought of by most of the people that plagiarism occurs when a person copies another person's work or borrow someone else's original ideas. In fact, it is one of the most wide spread form of corruption which can damage one's reputation and career in the academics (Sharma, 2016).

Many academic communities specially research scholars and students search the fastest possible solution to for their educational and research activities, regardless of the validity of the sources or respect to the work of others, a phenomenon that is widespread across all educational levels (Sureda, Comas, & Oliver, 2015). Academic publishing is a key factor for any person in higher education institutions. All students, lecturers, professors and researchers in general tend to publish their works and the results of their studies in conference proceedings, books, journals or magazines (Hockenos, 2013). Plagiarism's reach has now grown to include online outlets, which was previously limited to print media. This environment is aided by smart technology, which allows for fast online searches for answers and knowledge transfer via email.

Reasons why university researchers and students plagiarise may be connected with inexperience with using information sources, peer pressure, pressure to succeed, and lack of resources. Some students have never learned evidence-based writing skills or have low reading competency levels (Baird & Dooey, 2014). Plagiarism may be defined as the appropriation of one's own work or the work of others without citing or acknowledging the source (Chen & Chou, 2017; Ocholla & Ocholla, 2016). Plagiarism is a recurring problem in higher education (Jiang, Emmerton, & Mckange, 2013; Lorenz, 2013).