Blog #4 Plagiarism Tutorial - Sheng Lu

In tutorial question 2, it mainly describes a question about common knowledge citing. In that situation, it has been assumed that you are going to write a research paper which focuses on some field you are not familiar with, and at the same time, you don’t know whether it is appropriate to cite the common knowledge which most of people have known that. As far as I am concerned, in academic writing, no matter what field in which you are going to write or what types of paper you are going to write, citing the resource of the knowledge or idea you used in your paper is always one of the most significant things you need to do. Because, to do this not only do make you an intelligent people who is aware of what is going on, but also make your paper well elaborated. Similarly, because common knowledge is the same as any other type of knowledge, it must be cited, even if you found it in the textbook, and also, in order to avoid of being accused of plagiarism, citing this material would be the safest strategy.

In tutorial question 6, it describes a question about plagiarism from professors. In that situation, it has been assumed that one of your professors has taken something which you wrote for a course. As far as I am concerned, it is plagiarism no matter who you are or what degree you have if you violating the rule of plagiarism. In this situation, whether it is an academic plagiarism really depends on whether the professor cites the source of this idea or contents. Or similarly, whether he gets the permission from you to use these materials? If no, it is definitely a plagiarism. Because everything you write down, even to turn in for a class, belongs to you or, in other words, you own the copy right of these materials. Therefore, the professor has no reason to use these without citing or getting the permission from you.

Through all the questions and situations assumed, I think question 3 which about the secondary citation and the question 6 which is about plagiarism violated by a professor, are some serious problems we student might encountered. Anyway, In order to prevent from violating the intelligence norm, I suggest that no matter what situation it is, always keep in mind that remember to cite the resource of those idea or thoughts which are not originally generated from your own.