List of the Most Common Types of Plagiarism You Should Know

In general, plagiarism is an act of copying others' ideas and work into your work without giving credit to the original author. In short, plagiarism is the act of stealing others' intellectual property, hence it is an act of dishonesty. There are many different types of plagiarism and the most common cause of plagiarism in student’s dissertations and papers is that of ‘carelessness’. Irrespective of the cause, plagiarism is an act that must be avoided by all students. Mostly, new students do not have an idea of what plagiarism is and how it can be avoided. Hence, students should be well aware of the type of plagiarism so that they can become capable of avoiding it. This essay will give you a glance at the types of that the students can use for easily identifying the cause of the high similarity index in their work and take measures to avoid them.

1. Types of Plagiarism

1. 1. Direct Plagiarism (DP):

Direct plagiarism is an act of copying material from already published data. This means copying someone else's work and stating that it is your own. This is the most common type of plagiarism often found in-class assignments. In such cases, the resulting document is an exact copy of already present findings. But new students are unaware of the fact that for teachers it is an easy task to detect direct plagiarism.

1. 2. Word to Word Plagiarism (W-W-P):

Word to word plagiarism is another name of direct plagiarism. According to the manager of PhD dissertation writing service, a similar index in this type of plagiarism is very high and it is considered as a serious crime. Mostly, this kind of plagiarism is present in direct quotations where students want to cite the words and expressions of some renowned personality. The act of enclosing such words and expressions in quotation marks can avoid this type of plagiarism.

1. 3. Mosaic Plagiarism (MP):

This is an unintentional form of plagiarism where sometimes, the writer takes material from a source and acknowledges them. But the way of writing may resemble another author’s keywords that cause plagiarism in the text. It occurs often when the writers directly copy a few lines and phrases after getting inspired by other’s work. Word by word paraphrasing may cause this type of plagiarism as well. To avoid this type of plagiarism, the student must prepare an outline of his work to produce original content.

1. 4. Self-Plagiarism (SP):

Self-plagiarism mostly occurs in high school work where students copy and paste their work and submit it to another teacher just to score well. Self-plagiarism is simply the production of replicates by the students. In such cases, before submission of a single assignment for two different projects, the student must have a teacher’s consent letter. This type of plagiarism is common in research papers produced from already submitted dissertations.

1. 5. Aggregated Plagiarism (AP):

Writing the same idea already purposed by other assignments is another kind of plagiarism called aggregated plagiarism. For example, sometimes people select some data relevant to the topic under study and rewrite it by changing the arrangements of words. Writing someone else’s ideas in your own words does not prove the uniqueness of your research so this practice can also be classified under the term ‘plagiarism’. To avoid such plagiarism, you must use others' thoughts to support or oppose your idea to enhance the originality of your research.

1. 6. Bibliography Plagiarism (BP):

Bibliography is the last part of a dissertation or research paper. Sometimes, students copy someone else’s bibliography and attach it with their work. Such type of plagiarism is termed as bibliography plagiarism. In other cases, students copy and paste other’s references in their bibliography just to increase the number of references, without taking any kind of material from these sources. To avoid such bibliography plagiarism, students should give proper reference to every secondary source with honesty.

1. 7. Accidental Plagiarism (AcP):

Accidental plagiarism occurs when a student searches multiple sources. And after getting an idea about the proposed mechanism he makes notes out of it and uses these notes to compose semester assignments. In such cases, students often forget to cite the proper reference. This is an unintentional way of producing plagiarism. The most effective solution to accidental plagiarism is to name the references with online reference generators.

1. 8. Collaboration Plagiarism (CP):

In universities, students are often working in collaborations or groups on a single project. Sometimes, a single student presents the whole project by pretending that the project was completed by him and that no one helped him. This type of ethical issue is called collaboration plagiarism which is very offensive for other students and tutors. The students must be aware about the ethical consideration of working in collaborations to avoid this type of plagiarism.

1. 9. Secondary source plagiarism (SSP):

Sometimes students collect data for their research from both primary and secondary sources but forget to give reference to the secondary data. This type of plagiarism is called secondary source plagiarism. The MD of a coursework writing service firm said that primary sources do not need to be cited but secondary sources require proper citations. This difference sometimes confuses students and they unintentionally commit this crime.

1. 10. Borrowed Plagiarism (BwP):

With the advancement in technologies and digital ways of communication, the incidence of borrowed plagiarism is increasing very rapidly. Borrowed plagiarism deals with cases where students buy assignments from other students and get evaluated on others’ skills. The University of Bradford announced that if a student buys assignments from other sources he will be expelled from the university. Perhaps, borrowed plagiarism is one of the most offensive types of plagiarism being enlisted.

1. 11. Contributing Author Plagiarism:

Contributing author plagiarism involves acknowledgment issues between the different authors and editors within the paper publication process. Sometimes a first author did not mention the name of other editors and proofreaders that contributed to research. To avoid contributing to author plagiarism, every writer, editor, and research assistant who helps you in the completion of your research must be acknowledged in the research project.

By understanding different types of plagiarism, it has become clear as to what practices are responsible for this crime and what should a student do to avoid plagiarism from their academic writing. The purpose behind the understanding of plagiarism by its type is to decrease the abundance of the same idea in multiple sources and to ultimately generate original writing pieces.