{"id":1834,"date":"2026-04-10T08:35:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.us\/blog\/?p=1834"},"modified":"2026-03-30T08:44:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T03:14:47","slug":"what-is-plagiarism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.us\/blog\/what-is-plagiarism\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Plagiarism? Types of Plagiarism\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Plagiarism, simply put, is&nbsp;presenting&nbsp;someone else&#8217;s words,&nbsp;work, or creative products (images, music, etc.)&nbsp;as your own&nbsp;without properly acknowledging them. In academia, it is treated as an ethical breach&nbsp;and a form of intellectual theft.&nbsp;Notice here that&nbsp;the definition of plagiarism&nbsp;doesn\u2019t&nbsp;include \u201cintent\u201d.&nbsp;In other words, plagiarism is plagiarism, whether you intended to copy someone else&#8217;s work&nbsp;or&nbsp;it happened just by accident.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Types of Plagiarism&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What are the consequences of plagiarism in academia?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How to Avoid Plagiarism&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Types of Plagiarism&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Direct Plagiarism&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This is what every kid is warned about in Grade 1:&nbsp;it\u2019s&nbsp;wrong to copy someone else\u2019s work&nbsp;as if&nbsp;you\u2019ve&nbsp;done it yourself.&nbsp;For example,&nbsp;the historian&nbsp;Doris Goodwin was accused of&nbsp;lifting many passages in her book&nbsp;<em>The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys<\/em>&nbsp;from other biographies and works.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Indirect Plagiarism\/Paraphrasing Plagiarism&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Indirect plagiarism&nbsp;or paraphrasing plagiarism&nbsp;involves using someone else\u2019s ideas or&nbsp;thoughts but \u201cclothing\u201d them in your own words&nbsp;and not acknowledging them.&nbsp;In academia, this happens mostly when you&nbsp;don\u2019t&nbsp;include proper citations.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Example&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Original text (by&nbsp;Larsson &amp;&nbsp;Nguyen, 2020):&nbsp;Our findings show that cardiovascular disease risk is elevated&nbsp;in patients with&nbsp;a previous&nbsp;history of&nbsp;kenrickomycin&nbsp;use.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Your text:&nbsp;Kenrickomycin&nbsp;use can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.&nbsp;[no citation]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Self Plagiarism&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Did you know that&nbsp;taking sections of text or even ideas from your own&nbsp;previous&nbsp;work is also considered plagiarism?&nbsp;Self plagiarism&nbsp;is unethical in academia because you are misleading others about how novel or original the content is.&nbsp;Also, if your&nbsp;previous&nbsp;work is already published,&nbsp;self plagiarism&nbsp;can involve copyright violations.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Mosaic Plagiarism&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>As the name implies, mosaic plagiarism involves snipping bits and pieces from multiple&nbsp;previous&nbsp;works and then combining them together to look like original content. Again,&nbsp;there\u2019s&nbsp;no proper citation or attribution to these&nbsp;previous&nbsp;works.&nbsp;Mosaic plagiarism is harder to detect because&nbsp;there\u2019s&nbsp;a mix of original and copied text, but&nbsp;experts familiar with the field or topic are likely to spot it.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Accidental Plagiarism&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This occurs when authors genuinely believe they are producing original text but have unintentionally duplicated existing work.&nbsp;It\u2019s&nbsp;just as serious as the other types of plagiarism listed&nbsp;above, because&nbsp;it\u2019s&nbsp;hard to prove your innocence.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What are the consequences of plagiarism in academia?&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If plagiarism is detected in your work, the consequences include&nbsp;failing the assignment, failing the course,&nbsp;suspension&nbsp;or expulsion if you are a student. If you are a researcher,&nbsp;you could lose your&nbsp;funding and&nbsp;employment, be sued, and lose your reputation, and even your other work will lose credibility.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to Avoid Plagiarism&nbsp;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Do Your Own Work&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Write&nbsp;your essays, articles, or reports yourself.&nbsp;Don\u2019t&nbsp;outsource them to a paid&nbsp;third party&nbsp;service and copy their output blindly.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Give Your Opinion&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Don\u2019t&nbsp;lift&nbsp;ideas&nbsp;from another work even if&nbsp;you\u2019re&nbsp;adding a citation. Discuss other authors\u2019 works in your own words, giving your own opinions and insights.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Example:&nbsp;Chaiyaporn&nbsp;and&nbsp;Kauri (2015)&nbsp;showed a link between&nbsp;preconception Vitamin D intake and&nbsp;gestational diabetes after controlling for maternal obesity, but their sample&nbsp;did not include women with a history of Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Indicate Quotes Correctly&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes you&nbsp;<em>need&nbsp;<\/em>to refer to&nbsp;a previous&nbsp;source word-for-word. In that case, do what humanities and arts researchers do:&nbsp;indicate&nbsp;quotations with quotation marks or format them as block quotations, with a proper citation and reference.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Example: The WHO has described the current&nbsp;amphitextitis&nbsp;epidemic as \u201ca global concern of unparalleled&nbsp;severity\u201d (WHO, 2050).&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Manage Citations Properly&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Use an online citation management tool to keep track of what papers you are reading for what project, so that you&nbsp;don\u2019t&nbsp;forget to reference them when you use their ideas or insights.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Use AI Carefully&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>It can be tempting to outsource much or&nbsp;all of&nbsp;your writing to a free large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT. But AI output may not be 100% free of plagiarism, as such&nbsp;tools are&nbsp;basically&nbsp;<em>text&nbsp;predictors<\/em>: they&nbsp;come up with&nbsp;words or combinations of words&nbsp;on the basis of&nbsp;their analyses of large training datasets.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Run Your Own Plagiarism Check&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether&nbsp;you\u2019re&nbsp;submitting&nbsp;an essay, thesis, or research paper,&nbsp;it\u2019s&nbsp;a good idea&nbsp;to run your own plagiarism check to guard against accidental plagiarism. You can use a free academic writing assistant like&nbsp;Paperpal&nbsp;or opt for a paid service like iThenticate.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plagiarism, simply put, is&nbsp;presenting&nbsp;someone else&#8217;s words,&nbsp;work, or creative products (images, music, etc.)&nbsp;as your own&nbsp;without properly acknowledging them. In academia, it is treated as an ethical breach&nbsp;and a form of intellectual theft.&nbsp;Notice here that&nbsp;the definition of plagiarism&nbsp;doesn\u2019t&nbsp;include \u201cintent\u201d.&nbsp;In other words, plagiarism is plagiarism, whether you intended to copy someone else&#8217;s work&nbsp;or&nbsp;it happened just by accident.&nbsp;&nbsp; Types [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,448,137,285],"ppma_author":[441],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Is Plagiarism? 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