To begin with, it is important to find out what plagiarism is and what it is not. Different sources give various definitions but they are more or less similar. Plagiarism is viewed as “the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication, of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the representation of them as one's own original work”. [1, 2] So even one of the features mentioned in the definition makes the work a literary piracy. However, parts of someone’s work used in your own with the reference to its original author cannot be considered as plagiarism. Every idea that is picked from a work that does not belong to you should be presented as a citation or its author should be mentioned.

It is also interesting to single out the spheres where copying other people’s ideas is more widespread. Education and literary works tend to involve more possibilities of reproducing someone else’s work. However, people working in other fields are not devoid of this sin too. Musical or technological plagiarism takes place quite often though technological inventions are, as a rule, patent-protected. So plagiarism in the sphere of education and literature seems to be more frequent and widespread. Students and writers sometimes make use of materials without any reference to the author and the title of the work. As a matter of fact, a study by The Center for Academic Integrity found that almost 80% of college students admit to cheating at least once. [3] While the problem of plagiarism in the sphere of literature seems to be resulting from the desire to earn more, plagiarism in education is the issue which is hard to control and prevent.

Primarily, it is necessary to figure out the reasons for plagiarism in education. Why do students “steal” other people’s thoughts and fruits of their labour? The answer is quite simple – what for does one need to be at pains and turn oneself inside out if it is possible to save both time and effort? Many students get good and excellent marks for the works they have not even had a hand in. By the way, there are always a lot of academic disciplines in a semester and students are to hand out several reports and course papers so it turns out to be a heaven-sent way out to copy someone’s article or simply to pass off someone else’s work as your own. So in general, the activity described above is called plagiarism as the student picks the ideas of other people without asking a permission to use them. It seems improbable to charge such students with a crime because they do not obtain material benefit from the copied works except for good marks. But in any case this is definitely copyright violation.

Here you might object: then how should we live? We simply cannot invent new ideas all the time! In fact, using thoughts and conceptions which already exist is as normal as using the words which already exist in language and speech. The thing is that we must report where and from whom we borrow these ideas. For instance, if you want to impress all your colleges with a new business plan which might save the company from the bankrupt, do not say that it is your personal discovery if this plan was used long ago. Imagine how it would be offensive to you if someone used your invention and pretended it is this person’s work.

Now after so much talking about plagiarism itself, it is time to seek for methods which may help to reduce the amount of plagiarized works. Actually plagiarism is not so hard to identify, it is much harder to prevent it. All the methods are practically subdivided into those which presuppose punishment for plagiarism and those which include persuasion and explanation. The second group of methods is especially effective in the sphere of education because it is important to help students understand what consequences plagiarism has. Punishment and sanctions applied to plagiarists have mainly a deterrent effect which is at times useful as well.

Another serious problem connected with the topic is the influence of plagiarism on people and society. First of all, plagiarism is, to be quite honest about it, the process and the result of stealing someone’s ideas. This is indeed a kind of violation of social norms and patterns of behaviour. It seems to us natural not to take other people’s money or things, but we seldom admit that ideas and thoughts are sort of property as well. That is why plagiarism undermines ethical standards and sets many rules at naught. But besides this negative influence on people in general, plagiarism has an adverse effect on each individual. Copying works which belong to other people makes us unable to think independently, we lose our own opinion (whether this opinion is scientific or is simply based on our personal experience). It imbues us with unwillingness to express our own point of view, to create something new and persist in our statements. Students are at risk of becoming incompetent when they pass off these materials as their own. This happens mainly because they become incapable of conducting their own scientific research. They cannot select material, propose a hypothesis and draw logical conclusions; they have no practice of making their research papers structurally correct. From this point of view, such students are of no use for the rapidly developing society because they are dishonest “consumers” of other people’s ideas and are not able to produce anything new and useful for humankind.

Thus, having started with the features that define the term “plagiarism”, we came to the after-effects of this phenomenon. All this enables us to say that there is no simple remedy for the problem. In fact, the problem exists in our minds so this is the place where the problem should be eradicated from. We should realize that we make ourselves inferior members of society when plagiarizing. That is why there should be a motto for every intelligent and successful person: “Do not plagiarize!”

Reference list
1. Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, 1995
2. Oxford English Dictionary, 2004
3. http://www.plagiarism.org/