Blog 9 - Plagiarism Tutorial

In the website of online tutorial, there are 10 interesting questions about plagiarism in different situations.  One of the situations is that I was asked to discuss my paper before I started writing it in a peer discussion group.  A member in this group gave me a good idea, and the question asked whether I should cite the idea in my paper just as I would cite a quotation from a paper.  I would say that I need to cite his/her idea as I cite from other’s paper as usual for sure.  Even though the purpose of group discussion is sharing idea and obtain inspirations from friends, it can cause plagiarism problem if the provider of idea bring up a question about it.  In the answer of this question, there is “personal communication” as one of method for citing other’s idea.  This is the way of citation for idea which is not written down.  Since the idea is not written down, it cannot be regard as “intellectual property”.  However, I can give credit for the idea to avoid embarrassing situation.  It was an interesting question because I could know about new citation, which is “personal communication”. 

            Another situation, the questions are considered, is that a person was assigned to upload something to a class list online.  This person finds an interesting article on the internet and copies and pastes it in his/her posting.  The question asked if it is considered as plagiarism.  I would answer that it can be regard as plagiarism.  Since the person did not give any reference list or credit, he can be involved in plagiarism and his professor might feel that he should not have directly copied and pasted the article.  It was also an interesting question because it reminded me that I should provide a reference list even though I post an article only for the class.

            This tutorial made me understand the plagiarism more deeply with different situations.  The situations in every question were confusing to exactly say that it is plagiarism.  However, it advised what I should do and which the best solution for the situation is.  Therefore, I received a lot of advice and could remind citation and giving reference list is important.