Unintentional Plagiarism

Home » About Plagiarism » Unintentional Plagiarism

Date: July 18, 2018

What Is Unintentional Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is not only the cheating of the thoughts and the ideas of the other people but it is an act of stealing the intellectual property. There are various reasons for plagiarism and there are different views about the reasons for plagiarism. The understanding of the reasons of plagiarism is very important to avoid it. In most of the cases, people make the excuses that they even do not know about the concept of plagiarism, and they unintentionally fall in this act. But the issue arises to distinguish between the aware and the unaware criminals. Such kind of plagiarism is known as unintentional plagiarism as in this case the person is unaware of the plagiarism.

Types of unintentional plagiarism

There are many people who when becoming the accused of plagiarism claim to suffer from the unintentional plagiarism. Therefore, to make such people aware of unintentional plagiarism is very necessary because they can confuse the two terms plagiarism and the research. In fact, there are some types of unintentional plagiarism which are as follows:

1. Citation Confusion

One of the most common types of unintentional plagiarism is the citation confusion and in this type, the writer is unaware of the rules of proper referencing and citation; like the complete link is not given for the source and this thing makes it difficult to trace the path of the source. Forgetting the proper information on the citation procedure there are various websites which can be consulted.

2. Paraphrasing

Most of the people go for the unintentional plagiarism with paraphrasing, in which they only get the different sentences from various websites and then make a new sentence but with the old and copied idea. It is very hard for the authorities to identify the unintentional plagiarism.

3. Word Substitution

In this unintentional plagiarism the writer just changes the wording of the written material but the idea and the thought is totally copied.

Avoiding Unintentional Plagiarism To avoid unintentional plagiarism; is very difficult to follow because of the various types of unintentional plagiarism. But still, the awareness can be enhanced to achieve this aim. Some of the students merge their views with the views of the other people and after some time they get accused of unintentional plagiarism. This can be avoided by clearly depicting the arguments of others with proper references and then coming up with your own conclusion. The instructors can also guide the students in making the notes and also help them in proper quoting the quotations during the lecture. During the meetings with the students on the research papers and the projects, the teacher can show the interest in knowing the sources so that students can beware of the sensitivity of the issue. Some references can also be provided by the teachers themselves for ensuring the reduction of unintentional plagiarism. There are also some ways to show up the unknown cites and for this, the instructor can help the students.

Unintentional plagiarism also sometimes saves those people who initially utilized these means. Therefore, for reducing the plagiarism at a higher level the need of the time is to block all of the means of plagiarism. Instructors can do one of the best things that they can explain the students about the risks involved in plagiarism like the copyright laws. In this way, to a great extent, they can feel the fear of disobedience these laws. If all of the above procedures are followed then the threat to the insecurity of intellectual property can be removed. There are various other aspects of unintentional plagiarism which you can learn from various websites available on the Internet.