Academic integrity: avoiding plagiarism

In the long term, plagiarism benefits nobody. It can be a short term benefit for somebody who gets away with it, but at some point they will have cheated themselves out of the knowledge and experience they falsely claim. Having your work plagiarized by somebody else isn’t fair, credit should always be given. Plagiarism doesn’t just affect students, but can have real life ratifications in your social life, your career, and your public image.

There was not a lot of information during the Academic Integrity presentation that I was not already aware of because I have already taken ARTS 099. However, I found the examples of the real life consequences of plagiarism interesting because plagiarism is usually spoken of in an academic setting. Another example of plagiarism affecting public relations that I found interesting is Shia LaBeouf. In 2012 Shia directed a short film called Howard Cantour. com. The film had a successful premiere and was critically acclaimed. Shortly afterwards, a twitter user named John Gholson pointed out the similarities between the short film and a comic written by Daniel Clowes in 2007. The film included “ direct quotes, dialogues, and the narrative structure”(cite) of the comic.

Once the plagiarism allegations and backlash came back to Shia, he issued an apology. He then faced more backlash when it was discovered that he plagiarized his apology for plagiarism from a yahoo answers post submitted by a user named Lili in 2010. (Cite)“ Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty where the work of another person is submitted without acknowledgement, whether from intent to deceive, lack of understanding, or carelessness. ” (UofR, 2018, pg2)This semester when I am submitting my course work I will take multiple steps to ensure I maintain my academic honesty and personal integrity. The first being that I will keep track of every single source I find when researching a topic. Whether or not I use any information from a specific source or not, I will document and cite it if needed. This will be important step to take so that no potential influences on my work go undocumented. The second strategy I will apply is using an online plagiarism checker. This is a tool that allows you to enter a body of work, have it scanned and compared to other published documents across the internet, and get a percentage rating of how original it is. This is a good way to avoid accidental plagiarism and coincidental similarities.

The third strategy I will utilize is to be careful when paraphrasing, and to always cite even if I change the format or delivery of the relevant information. Upholding my academic integrity is important to me because I am in this program to learn the necessary skills and habits for becoming a successful student. The consequences for academic dishonesty are counterintuitive to my goals. I don’t just need to work on becoming a better student, I must also make an active effort to not do the things that would make me a bad student. I have never been accused of academic misconduct and I believe this aligned with the standards I hold myself to personally, which i will continue to uphold.