pla·gia·rism
-noun
1. the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of
another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.
2. something used and represented in this manner.
http://dictionary.reference.com
On Tue Mar 20 17:48:59 PDT 2007, Gilbert Lawrence wrote:
If somebody copies MY work, I will be very pleased.
Because that further expands the message / concepts
that I want to spread.
RESPONSE: Gilbert, that's very gracious of you to let others copy your work
but that is not how this issue really works, today, especially from high
school all the way to PhD. Many students have gotten into serious trouble
even for minor infractions at some prestigious schools and there is a fair
amount of air time in the press too. There are utilities out there like
turnitin.com that will help a prof fish you out in a matter of seconds.
My goal of writing a scientific paper (say on breast
cancer), is not for self-aggrandizement. It is to help
breast cancer patients. So anything that helps in
spreading the info and improving the treatment (that
is being suggested) is welcome - whether I get credit
or not.
RESPONSE: Help me out here - do medical/scientific papers have to conform to
any formatting standard? For eg. APA, MLA, Chicago, British ? If they do,
then citations, footnotes, bibliography are the norm and the issue of
plagiarism does not arise.
On a more localised level, we have the issue of some people sending news
stories here without the original weblink. That too can be problematic.
We've seen FN post some of his content here using the Creative Commons (CC)
licence which was recently launched at IIT-Mumbai. As I understand, you are
free to copy content published under this licence, but you still have to
include citations.
I think the issue that JoeGoaUK brought to our attention of people
plagiarizing his work is unfortunate. Its a known fact that JoeGoaUK invests
a considerable amount of time in generating those videoclips.
Some of the photos in the links that were provided by Jose Colaco seemed
dubious. But as he himself indicated that is a common location to take a
picture.
- Bosco
