Unit III Discussion Board
Plagiarism, which occurs in many forms such as copying direct work, paraphrasing, and using copyrighted academic material without acknowledging the author/publisher is a serious issue in the academic world. It can be intentional and accidental as Aaron and Greer (2019) note. One of the major reasons why it has become a serious issue is the emergence of online databases and webpages where information on any discipline is easily accessible through the click of a link. While the internet has made plagiarism easy, it has also allowed instructors to check material from search engines and find the specific pages or documents where the information was copied or paraphrased (Aaron & Greer, 2019). Therefore, when people copy/paraphrase or use the information without acknowledging the author, it does not only violate copyright terms but also defeats the goal of research which is to achieve learning through critical thinking and creativity.
I would certainly feel agitated if someone used my ideas and claimed them as their own. For instance, I would file a lawsuit if someone used wholly or copied a section of my bachelors, Masters, or Doctorate thesis and used it as part of his/her research without appropriately acknowledging my work of published content. The process of conducting research studies is an intensive one and requires significant resources in terms of academic time and money to complete (Ballenger, 2018). For instance, gathering data and empirical evidence calls for rigorous nationwide or global surveys and experiments. Additionally, books and journal papers require significant sums of money to publish. Therefore, it is certainly not right to utilize someone’s ideas whether copyrighted or not without acknowledging them in the form of appropriate citations, referencing, or other agreements.
References
Aaron, J. E., & Greer, M. (2019). The Little, Brown compact handbook, 10th edition. Pearson. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9780134680927
Ballenger, B. (2018). The curious researcher: A guide to writing research papers, 9th edition Pearson. Retrieved from https://online.vitalsource.com/#/books/9780134506739