Plagiarism Needs to be Viewed in Context

chillibreeze writer — Sreepal Warrier

Wikipedia, the web-based encyclopedia, defines ‘Plagiarism’ as "the use of another person’s work, this could be his or her words, products or ideas, for personal advantage, without proper acknowledgement of the original work, and with the intention of passing it off as one's own work". The site further goes on to state in amplification of the definition that: "The use of mere facts, rather than works of creative expression, does not constitute plagiarism". This article presents an independent analysis of the definition and the subsequent statement, in the light of the present day scenario.

The first and foremost consideration to be given while scrutinising a work for signs of plagiarism should be the intention of its author. An act of plagiarism, even against the backdrop of its presently accepted definition, should not be considered as a grave offence if the defaulter had only one purpose in mind while pinching some portion off another's work - that of educating a certain group of people! Towards this noble cause of sharing information, even if the writer adopts certain phrases and sentences from somebody else's work, it should be viewed in the right perspective. However, to qualify for this amnesty, the author should have borrowed only sentences and phrases stating logic, facts and figures, and not any literary or conceptual creations.

I would like to amplify the point mentioned above by citing some critical aspects of broadcasting and sharing of information. It really does not make much sense to dub an article as sacrilegious just because it happens to be a verbatim reproduction of certain portions from another long article, but accept it as sacrosanct if just a few words are replaced and a couple of prepositions interchanged during its reproduction! Let us assume that there is a small paragraph in a long article which spells out the advantages and disadvantages of a particular technique, say, a new maintenance concept. In this case, the author gets the credit for this paragraph, even though it contains only factual information which he may have obtained through various unacknowledged sources like formal and informal discussions with many experts, contents of many books and web sites etc. Extending this logic, verbatim reproduction of that paragraph in another article by a different author, with the sole aim of presenting the information to a different target group, should not fall under the category of plagiarism, as he has also resorted to collection of facts from a source with a noble cause!

So we as a community need to take a re-look at our stance against plagiarism and choose one of the two options namely,

Continue to fanatically object to plagiarism as it is defined now, and achieve the following:
- Retard the pace of information exchanges, or even bottle up information in zones of inaccessibility!
- Introduce new readers to distorted concepts as a result of inadequate and unwanted re-packaging efforts!
- Reduce the output of the community as a whole by insistence to re-invent the wheel, so to speak!
Redefine our fight against plagiarism to include only those cases in which the defaulters have, blatantly or discreetly, stolen works which had their origin in the creative half of somebody else's brain! In other words, presentation of logical facts should not constitute the object of an accusation of plagiarism at all! This would ensure smoother and faster flow of information to all the needy segments of the world, while still continuing to ostracize any intellectual property thieves.

Before I conclude, let me make my stand on the issue of plagiarism absolutely clear: I do not intend to support the shameful act of stealing creative intelligence in any form. My solidarity with plagiarism extends only up to the point of pleading for its acceptance as long as the intention of the defaulter is purely one of making factual information quickly available to the rest of the world, and the content in dispute is of such a nature that any alteration would render it inaccurate or inadequate!

Chillibreeze's disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article.

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—About our writer:

Sreepal says, "After a long stint with the Indian Air Force wherein my grey matter had to be used predominantly in the logical thinking mode,I am presently looking for opportunities to exercise the right hemisphere of my brain. A teetotaler with a penchant for black beverages, I spend a lot of time in front of the home PC, whenever its P-IV processor is not being tasked by my school-teacher wife or my adorable, college-going teenaged daughter."

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