Give Plagiarism the Weight It Deserves

Cut-and-paste plagiarism from the Internet is increasing, according to the 2005 study from The Center for Academic Integrity (www.academicintegrity.org/cai_research.asp). The research findings showed that 40 percent of almost 50,000 undergraduates questioned have plagiarized from the Net, up from

only 10 percent in 1999. What is more, fully 77 percent did not view such activity as a serious issue. For educators, this is sufficient to put plagiarism near the top of the information crimes agenda. You might not think that this is a topic for an information literacy column, but most standards in this field include the ethical use of information, which puts plagiarism front and center.

Plagiarism is presenting someone else's words or ideas as one's own, thus constituting misrepresentation and fraud. If I were to try to convince the world that it was I, not Pablo Picasso, who painted The Old Guitar Player, I would be labeled a fraud. Similarly, if I let on that I was the author of information that was someone else's, I would, in effect, be guilty of stealing the credit for that which is not mine.