Plagiarism can be defined as adopting someone else’s idea/ thoughts/ expression as your own without acknowledging the resources.  Though breach of one’s trust in this form accounts as a punishable offence in the court of law but a majority of these forms of plagiarism goes unnoticed. Plagiarism can occur in copyrighted sources and non-copyrighted sources. Any form which deals with copying and paraphrasing a content with nil or poorly cited source comes under a plagiarized content. In addition, if the content from copyrighted sources is rewritten with proper citations but lack in in-text attributions, it is referred to as a forged content.

The effects of plagiarism are more conspicuous in academia.   Broadly, there are two types of plagiarism: one where the sources are cited and another one where the sources are not cited. There is a very thin line between getting inspired from a source and using it in the original form. Addressing and clarifying the differences between plagiarism and research will help us prevent the common mistakes while citing a resource. The plagiarized content where the source is not cited includes information which has been copied and pasted without giving any information about the resources. On the other hand, a sufficiently rephrased content is still plagiarized, if the source information is not accurately presented. This misappropriation of data is most commonly found in academia. Dr. Balram, former Director Indian Institute of Science and former editor, Current Science, a reputed Indian peer-reviewed scientific journal accounts, quantity-over-quality minded approach as the reason for this sudden rise in the plagiarized contents.  Lack of regulatory services and lack of proper evaluation also lead to this deterrent trend of duplication.

We at HealthMinds believe in a quality over quantity approach and make sure a plagiarism free creation of content. The content inspired from a source is not only paraphrased but the original idea is given due credit in the form of citations and in-text attributions. Also, we make sure the guidelines behind the copyright policies and non-free contents are followed by our company. In short, knowledge is nothing but an amalgamation of different ideas and “when you have a wit of your own, get the pleasure to credit other people with theirs” (taken from ‘Killosophy’ quotes from Criss Jami).

Visit us at www.HealthMinds.in to know more about our work

Dr. Sarika Shiven