Plagiarism: Current Scenarios

Current Scenario The advancement of each field of research would not be able to be tracked without the sharing of their progresses from across the world. Writing research papers is inevitable for researchers no matter what field they are in, in which it allows the sharing of new knowledge through its publication. However, the research would be of no value if there is high percentage of plagiarism as it signifies the lack of original content in the work. Plagiarism is defined as the use of someone else’s idea without giving credit to them (Derntl, 2014). When acknowledgement is not given, the individual is considered to be violating copyright laws, in which he or she could be charged in court for this crime (Laws.com, 2015). Students, being

Only when people understand its significance will they be willing to always take action in preventing themselves from committing plagiarism at all costs. People are also taught on the ethics of writing and to always respect the work of others. This education usually starts in higher educational institutions because of the high frequency of academic writing. In Malaysia, institutions such as Government Universities and Private University Colleges make English courses compulsory for all their students in which students are to learn proper forms of citations, paraphrasing, quotation and referencing (Academic dishonesty and plagiarism, n.d.) as it is imperative to acknowledge the source used and give the credit to the original author(s) to prevent from committing plagiarism. The style for citation and referencing which is taught is usually the style practiced by the educational institution. Common formats of citation and referencing include APA, MLA, and Chicago style. Besides assessing students through examinations, group discussions on creating the strategies to prevent plagiarism in their academic writing can be conducted in class, enabling students to understand plagiarism more thoroughly and be able to identify them in their own writings. Lecturers often create online forums to encourage further engagement of students in discussions (Refer to Appendix I Figure 2) besides

Human resources are utilized to check for plagiarism through the hiring of editors to review whether the idea is of original content as well as the review of citations, referencing and even paraphrasing.

Writers often hire editors to review their work for them, but of course, with a certain payment. These editors help researchers avoid plagiarism by checking on citation and referencing, to determine whether or not it was done in the proper format as well as to ensure there are matching references to each citation. They will be able to determine the originality of contents in the work, provided that they have enough experience in the field to have a broad knowledge of its advancements. Journals usually practice peer-reviewed publications, where editors solicit referees to review paper that were submitted to their journals (Meier, 1992). Reviewers are selected due to their expertise in the subject written on, in which they would be competent enough to evaluate whether the work is of high quality or in other words, being accurate in facts, clear and concise in writing, and free of plagiarism. The decisions of the reviewer and the editorial board in turns affect the impact factor of the journal, where journals with higher impact factors are deemed to be of higher influence in its field (Althouse et al., 2009; Council of