How big of a problem is plagairism?

Plagiarism

A detailed perspective into certain incidences...

Imagine someone else getting credit for Isaac Newton's laws of physics...
Picture someone else having their name in the history books for Albert Einstein's theory of relativity...


Intellectual property is eerily similar to any other physical property and has laws protecting it. That being said, we now live in an age where intellectual property, or those ideas and creations that are developed in the mind can be easily adopted, and can be distributed rapidly through mass-communication technology, like the internet. Writing, the oldest form of communication (through symbols), has always been a way to disseminate different ideas. When someone writes an original idea, they have the right to capitalize off that idea. But, from time to time, people will use what someone else wrote and claim it as their own idea.


Let's examine some examples of plagiarism. Researchers from Rutgers University and The Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics studied self-reported incidences of cheating and plagiarism in high school, undergraduate classes, and even graduate classes.  (All facts were adopted from plagiarism.org and the link will be posted at the end of this post.)

Academic Integrity in High School:

1st Example

The Josephson Institute Center for Youth Ethics surveyed 43,000 high school students in public and private schools and found that:  

• 59% of high school students admitted cheating on a test during the last year.  34% self-reported doing it more than two times.
• One out of three high school students admitted that they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment

2nd Example

In a survey of 24,000 students at 70 high schools, Donald McCabe (Rutgers University) found that 64 percent of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58 percent admitted to plagiarism and 95 percent said they participated in some form of cheating, whether it was on a test, plagiarism or copying homework.

 

Academic Integrity in College and Graduate School:

3rd Example

A survey of over 63,700 US undergraduate and 9,250 graduate students over the course of three years (2002-2005)--conducted by Donald McCabe, Rutgers University--revealed the following:

• 36% of undergraduates admit to “paraphrasing/copying few sentences from Internet source without footnoting it.”
  • 24% of graduate students self report doing the same

• 38% admit to “paraphrasing/copying few sentences from written source without footnoting it.”
  • 25% of graduate students self report doing the same

• 14% of students admit to “fabricating/falsifying a bibliography”
  • 7% of graduate students self report doing the same

• 7% self report copying materials “almost word for word from a written source without citation.”
  • 4% of graduate students self report doing the same

• 7% self report “turning in work done by another.”
  • 3% of graduate students self report doing the same

• 3% report “obtaining paper from term paper mill.”
  • 2% of graduate students report doing so

Again, all of this data and more information about its resources can be found at the link below.
http://www.plagiarism.org/resources/facts-and-stats/