Publishing Principles and Plagiarism

Righthaven has been undergoing some tough times lately because it was accused of violation of copyrights. According to Wired, it has brought quite a number of profits to Righthaven. Even though journalists have to work under a tight timing, they should not plagiarize copyrighted materials. (Editors Weblog, 2011)

According to Cynthia R. King (2011), ethical integrity is important in wiring and publications. Before writing and publishing, one has to take into consideration of etiquette, fraudulent publication, plagiarism, duplication publication, authorship and conflict of interest. Besides that, good strategies have to be made to prevent violation. (La Follette, 1992, Malone, 1998) For example, for some journals, there are only limited amount of authors in order to protect the authors. (Sly, 1997) (Oncology Nursing Society, 2011)

(Image Source: justaperspective26.blogspot.com)

According to Wadsworth (2011), plagiarism means, “to kidnap”. If an individual is plagiarizing other people’s work, he or she is stealing an intellectual property. No one wants a hard work to be stolen. However, some writer steals other people’s work without realizing. Often they are do not realize because they did not know how to reference sources properly. Plagiarism and misuse sage of sources are different. There are too much of information available in the Internet, therefore, journalist are being tempted to “copy” some of the work from other people. There are a few steps to avoid plagiarism, namely:

1. Do not use other people’s words without referencing them.
2. Do not use other people’s idea without referencing them. For example, if an individual found a picture from the Internet, he or she will have to cite the source under the picture to avoid plagiarism.

(Wadsworth, 2011)

References:

Editors Weblog.org, 2011, Copyrighted Materials: Fair and Unfair Use, retrieved on 13^th November 2011, http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2011/06/copyrighted_material_fair_and_unfair_use.php

La Follette, M. (1992). Stealing into print: Fraud, plagiarism, and misconduct in scientific publishing. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Oncology Nursing Society, 2011, Ethical Issues in Writing and Publishing, retrieved on 13^th November 2011, http://www.ons.org/Publications/CJON/AuthorInfo/WritingSupp/Ethics/

Sly, R.M. (1997). Ethical writing and responsible medical practice. Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, 79, 489-494.

Wadsworth, 2011, What Is Plagiarism?, retrieved on 13^th November 2011, http://www.wadsworth.com/english_d/special_features/plagiarism/definition.html