Monday, October 6, 2008

Plagiarism 101

Today, we had a briefing about Plagiarism. J had already warned me to be careful on this as the UK education system is very strict on proper referencing of others' works. However, after the briefing today, I think their concern on plagiarism is downright paranoid. Seriously. We were given an exercise on how to paraphrase a paragraph so that we are not seen as copying word for word.

The paragraph given was on the difference between outsourcing and contracting. It was basically a general statement on the differences. However, it was actually written by a guy named Brown. So, even after we paraphrase it, we would still need to make the reference to the original author.

The problem that I have with this is that the given paragraph was that it was a pretty general statement. If someone had asked me what is the difference between outsourcing and contracting, I would have answered in my own words something quite similar to what was given. Yet, if I have not read Brown's work and hence did not think of making the reference to his work, I would have been considered to have plagiarise his work. I think it is just absurd.

No comments: