Blog 4# Guo Shiyu

The website, OSU online plagiarism tutorial, discusses some complicated situations related to plagiarism. Question 1 and 6 attract my attention the most among those questions. The first question argues whether it is proper to use one’s own past work to another new assignment. The answer introduces the concept of “self-plagiarism”, which does not count as plagiarism but still a kind of academic misconduct. I have never considered using my own work as misconduct before. This question provides me a new understanding of the academic misconduct. Question 6 describes the situation that a professor takes a student’s work without permission. As I conceive from this issue, the copyright of an intellectual property belongs to the creator and is inviolable by anyone without the permission of the creator. Even in the scenario of question 6, it is still unreasonable for the professor to plagiarize a student’s work.

After finishing the exercise, I learnt a lot but also felt very stressful because of the numerousness of rules. I realize a new concept named “self-plagiarism” from question 1, which indicates what I did before were all wrong. I am taught to this new rule but cannot totally understand it. Moreover, as the question 6 illustrated, copyright is protected by law. It makes sense and I agree with it. Even the teachers do not have the authority of using one’s work without permission. This rule is fair. All the unfairness will have its fairness, this is the conclusion.