If you’re having goosebumps listening to the word plagiarism, I can relate! Let’s explore this a little further.
A Brief Historical Overview: Plagiarism as a phenomenon is not new but it got the official name back in 1601 referring to literary theft aka copy/pasting, paraphrasing, accidental/image/data stealing.
It can be a social media post or an academic work, a Pinterest image, or a Youtube video: if you’re copying, then you are plagiarising.
Why Do People Plagiarise: It’s similar to asking why people steal. The short answer: They lack their own ideas.
The longer answer includes reasons like:
- Using others’ thoughts seems easier.
- People can be lazy by nature.
- Time constraints.
- Lack of self-confidence/knowledge.
- Not realizing they’re plagiarising.
- Fear of failing with their own ideas.
- Disregarding ethical honesty.
- Believing they won’t get caught.
How to Overcome Plagiarism and Stay Real: If you can relate yourself to any of the above points, that’s great. Why? Since you’re one step behind from making another plagiarism. We could go point by point, but at the same time we can just state- Stop it!
Anyway, if you’re still struggling with this:
- Develop research skills to form your own conclusions.
- Prioritise tasks to have time for original thinking.
- Work on your writing skills. Even if you are expressing your thoughts but doing it with someone else’s style of writing doesn’t keep you away from plagiarism
- Starting with citations could be a thing for the first steps. So be aware of how to use them (see at the end of the article).
- Ethical honesty/awareness, anything that starts with the word ethical is already a matter of subjective perception, still, there are non-written rules we should follow.
Impact of Plagiarism on Business:
- Reputation Damage: Copying damages a company’s reputation, leading to lost trust and customers.
- Legal Consequences
- Financial loss to the other company which can later also result in legal issues
- Missed Partnership Opportunities.
What to Do If You Are Plagiarised: Well, you can write such an article as I did 🙂 Or if that doesn’t work you can take action by gathering evidence and contacting the plagiarizer. For academic or professional work, involve authorities if you’ve copyrighted your content.
Final Notes: In today’s AI-dominated world, where the temptation to use tools like ChatGPT/Bard at every opportunity is increasing rapidly, keep your genuineness, since at the end of the day that’s one of the core things that makes us differ and stand out.
References:
Fixgerald, Fixgerald website, August 17, 2023. https://fixgerald.com/blog/plagiarism-in-business
ChatGPT, ChatGPT website, August 17, 2023. Chat.openai.com, proofreading
Author: Rita Marinosyan
