Plagiarism is the use of exact words and ideas of other people or another author without giving proper acknowledgement to the owner. It is also defined as the use of another person’s works, ideas, theories, strategies, and interpretation without permission from the author or person. This act of dishonesty is a serious offense in school communities, that could possibly result to expulsion or suspension. It can be diverse in its extent based on its amount. Student commits plagiarism by just replacing the words with synonyms and changing some parts of the original document is a very common act (Klien, 2011).
Since the 1600s, plagiarism is identified as a problem. This unlawful act must be prevented and in line with moral virtues, values, and behave accordingly. Conferring to literature, to scrutinize the understanding and concept of plagiarism is to solve this problem.
There is also known as cyber plagiarism, it is a copy-paste act in the internet. Students are mostly engaged in this kind of act and was reported plagiarizing as they copy-paste information from the internet. Therefore, acts such as; download, editing, and printing an article or book coming from a website and claiming an article as their original writing is morally wrong and can receive consequence (Kokkinaki et al.,2015).
The arise of electronic technology is the ins and outs of plagiarism. It has limitless knowledge that aims to provide the information to those researchers anytime-anywhere. It becomes ever-complicated because of the factors that result in plagiarism; such as students understanding of plagiarism, self-realization, ethics, and personal attitude, internet access, pressure, and learning environment (Smith et al., 2007).
According to Gillespie (2003) Sims published an article about the relationship between unethical business and academic dishonesty practices. It was published in the year 1993, were they found most of senior and college student did a consistent academic dishonesty due to the standards of teachers, professors and the institution. The cavalier ignorance towards academic dishonesty is of concern for most higher education since it creates big impact to the organization that needed to unravel and impart some excessive knowledge concerning the credibility of their alma mater.
Many researchers argue about the uncertainty on what is supposed to do in academic dishonesty among learners (Ashworth et al., 1997). Learners claimed that they cannot consider to be dishonesty or cheating to what the teacher/professors tells them to do. An area of uncertainty might include them to have peer collaboration and eloquent to what is extent the collaboration considered to be inappropriate (Weiss & Bader, 2003). Lathrop & Foss (2003) agreed that there is a fundamental conflict between the teacher/professors to allocate collaboration work to their learners. Williams (2001) also stated that there might be point of crossing line on cheating that may differ by each teacher/professor.
According to McCabe & Trevino (1993, 1997, 2002) plagiarism and cheating is becoming a campus norm due to the lack of honor code and adequate consequences in this is one of the reasons why plagiarism wide spreading in campuses. They also suggest that having academic honor codes can reduce plagiarism and cheating and might be ended this kind of norm. Some students may engage in plagiarism practices particularly in school works, due to the easier access in the internet and more suitable answer they want (Garcia 2009). Students who either intentionally or unintentionally submit unoriginal work as their own, are hindering their ability to extract meaning from the information they read (Abdolmohammadi & Baker, 2007) are limiting their opportunity to develop higher level cognitive learning skills.
Plagiarism has been a problem in higher education institutions all throughout the globe. These practices are common issue that reported by numerous students Roman (2018). However, plagiarism today is now easily detected, there is a software that detects whether an essay is plagiarized and was performed with the Joint Information System Committee at University of Bedfordshire. Its gives benefit to the writes and authors to honor and preserve their works Bull, Collins, Coughlin, and Sharp (2001).
Reyes et al. (Sci Ed. 2015), that several universities and campuses across the Philippines, had plagiarism cases in the same way as University of the Philippines Diliman, the Organization’s largest and reputable university in the state found out to has numerous students plagiarize in the University. However, despite the verifiable cases of plagiarism in the university and its academic organization strict the rule on confidentiality in cases involving research malpractice. The Chancellor have the authority to examine selected final and execute the student case files to obsolete Student Disciplinary Tribunal. Reyes et al. (Sci Ed. 2015) also stated that currently, there are no national guidelines on dealing with plagiarism for academic publishers in the Philippines, or even for the University of the Philippines. Besides, plagiarism in the Philippines is still largely understudied. Existent work generally focuses on plagiarism by students, tackling educational interventions, or plagiarism in relation to legal issues.
Moreover, students or even others should learn how to express their own ideas and make it a challenge for themselves, and doing it with a foreign language makes the situation more difficult because of some reasons, for instance, language vocabulary limitation and the grammar if it is compared to the person’s mother tongue. Many international students borrow the words of native authors through lack of confidence in their own abilities to write correct, clear English. It is big challenge to every person who are not into English (Carroll, 2007).
Smith et al., (2007) said that plagiarism becomes increasingly problematic because of the factors that results to it; such as students understanding of plagiarism, self-realization, ethics and personal attitude, internet access, pressure and learning environment. Plagiarism gets more attention among the academic dishonesty, most of the professors, scholars and researchers (Shenton 2012). It can be described as the greatest challenges that a school or university is facing. Since plagiarism remains as a well-known problem in the academe, University teachers tended to overestimate their frequency (Hard et al., 2006). Students also perceive that plagiarism occurs more often than it does, greater extent than faculty, and generally attribute the high rate to strangers than the people they know (Engler et al., 2008). Rettinger and Kramer (2009) states that one reason that can distort students understanding of the required strategies that they should use to complete assignments is those unidentified group of students, who attended school regularly and submit, plagiarized works.
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Reasons for Plagiarism, Dishonest and Its Disadvantage
In the academic aspect plagiarism, dishonesty or cheating is not new but it is a phenomenon issue where mostly students are the host. The student’s way to cheat is via internet access by the usage of modern technology like cellphones, computers, laptops, iPad and etc.
According to Ma et al (2007) the reasons why students/learners commit plagiarism or academic cheating for the reason of peer culture, the offers of the website, pressure for aiming high academic grade and parents’ high expectations. Mcdowell and Brown (2001) added that the higher education’s standard is one of the reasons why students cheat to meet its objectives. Furthermore, the changes of the form of assessments such as projects, performance tasks, assignment and etc., affects the communication of both learner and educator that is why stealing information thru technology is the easiest way to do it. A dilemma that focuses only on maintain and targeting high grades to pass academic standards. In addition, internet is the easiest and simplest way for assignment completion which strongly related to plagiarism.
Eccles et al (2006) also stated that the student’s tendency to plagiarize is due to the lack of English knowledge and language on how to use it properly. Therefore, naturally born in English language has the advantage not to take plagiarism while unnaturally born in English language has the tendency to commit plagiarism. Student who had hard time because of heavy workloads to do may be pressured and do dishonest things. Moreover, lack of information skills of a student is a must concern to avoid cheating (Morey 2011).
Most of the reason to commit such academic dishonesty is the laziness and the poor or lack of understanding of citation rules and does not have time management, also the laziness of paraphrasing the text (Wilkinson, 2009). The internet has been blamed because of increasing the plagiarism practices that is happening these days and it is witnessed by the recent years. Internet also is a major and omnipresent at higher level institutions of learning (Selwyn, 2008).
Smit (2012) the disadvantage of plagiarism could be affecting the future career of a student(s)/person(s) whom only rely on stealing someone’s work. It keeps the laziness inside and always depend on ready-made works.
Academic Consequences
A student(s) caught on plagiarizing will face consequences which failure on academics, suspension and dismissal. The teachers, faculty and school will be the ones to do consequences (Judicial Board Advisor 2020). Shabe (2018) also added that consequences on plagiarism is depend on the institution of what type of rules they will get but in common in specified above failing grades, disciplinary action, suspension and etc. Avoiding plagiarism can save future career essentially students should properly cite sources, get permission to someone else’s work.
Belter et al., (2009) agreed to it and distinguish plagiarism as an intentional and unintentional. From the perspective of unintentional it is where a student who is just starting on learning how to write and do things must be informed and must understand how to avoid plagiarism and the consequences of plagiarism as the purpose of this study to avoid conflict regarding same thoughts and ideas. On the other hand, Intentional plagiarism is purposely presenting someone’s idea or work as its own without giving proper credits to the author. The most common act of intentional plagiarism is cheating in exams, doing an essay, copying someone’s work (Atrak, H., 2018). This will be permanently recorded and have a long-term consequence in the career of a person(s)/student(s) after proven doing plagiarism.
Capes (2011) also stated, to raise awareness about plagiarism in text documents, thesis paper, articles and so on to academic community. But since, some academic organization consider plagiarism not a consequential act, the students’ dishonesty such as cheating, lack of the owners’ acknowledgment, copying without citations and other written document will still on going for they have not experience a total and tangible consequences to their unrighteous act. As well, plagiarism can weaken the ability of the student(s)/learner(s) to attain skills required for higher education that could to be ignorant and harm themselves Conger, Loch 1996).
Plagiarism can bring monetary retribution and penalties for they offend the original writer and penalized to compensate for it. Moreover, Department of Justice (DOJ) conferring that plagiarism is not a crime itself but in sum up to copyright infringement carries a penalty of 3-6 years imprisonment and a fine of ₱50,000.00 – ₱150,000.00 if prosecuted under the law, it is legally based Under the law of Philippines Cybercrime Prevention Act or the Republic Act 10175, (Bailey, 2012).
According to Cole (2007) there still consequences to those graduate students who silently plagiarize where it attacks their personal integrity and lack of professionalism. In this situation their career might fall down and be criticize by other professionals.
Generally, the mentioned consequences can be destructive will greatly affect the violators life. By that students should learn on how to acquire and be independent to seek knowledge regarding English language.
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