Why is Plagiarism such a Big Deal?
Before explaining why plagiarism is something that you always have to avoid during your academic career, we will give you a brief definition of plagiarism.
Plagiarism is (i) turning in someone else’s work as your own, (ii) copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit, (iii) failing to put a quotation in quotation marks, (iv) giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation, (v) changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit, and (vi) copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not. As it can be seen from the definition above, plagiarism is an obvious violation of property rights and it is considered a fraud in academic practice. Therefore, it is academically and legally a quite problematic situation that may lead to you losing your academic or professional title and position in any part of your professional life.
Throughout your studies in this Institute, lecturers may ask you to agree to a check of your papers with an anti-plagiarism software and offenders automatically will fail the course assignment and cannot repeat the assignment in this particular course. Thus, they have to take another seminar in the respective module a year later. In case of serious plagiarism, the examination board can also come to a conclusion that the alleged plagiarism incident is severe. In such situations, this student will no longer be entitled to participate in the exams and he/she will lose the right to take seminars, thus will be dismissed from the program. Allegations of plagiarism initiate a legal procedure in which the examination board reviews the allegations and the work in question. If the allegations are confirmed, the board decides on whether it is a minor or major case, puts it on record, and informs the students. Additionally, the head of the examination board asks the students to see him/her during office hours. A second or major case plagiarism has serious consequences. In this case, the examination will be declared as “finally not passed” and the final degree can no longer be obtained at Freie Universität Berlin. In order to assist you to be well-informed about the details on plagiarism, our Institute prepared a useful leaflet, which is available here. In this text, you will also find helpful information on how to avoid plagiarism while citing or referring to other studies in your work. Hence, we highly recommend you to read this short text carefully before the beginning of your studies.
This definition is provided by ‘plagiarism.org’. For more information and details please visit this website.
