Blog #4 - Yupeng Yang

In the introductory tutorial, the 10 issues about plagiarism with the answers and explanations are extremely helpful to me. For instance, the fifth question is the solution when you couldn’t remember the original source of an exposition of some data that you have to cite it. It is said that you may not use the author’s research as your own without citation; you probably could find others’ opinions on the same problem and cite them with accurate source or change your topic to something else. Anyway, you must list the source as reference, if you intend to share others’ idea. The last question provides me with a great example of paraphrasing; also it demonstrates that it is possibly considered as plagiarism even if you just take the main idea of the original. It may be better to list the original as reference.

My major is Food Science, and there are lots of reports and scientific papers to do. The situation in the fifth issue is especially significant for me, since there is always secondary information retrieved for my works when it comes to the undergraduate research program and the graduation thesis. In the future, maybe I would become a scientist on food, and there would be great amount of papers for me to publish. That requires strong writing skills and inevitable citation. It is critical for me to develop academic integrity from now on. Otherwise, my research results would be unconvincing and probably considered as plagiarism in the field. The tutorial helps me a lot understand this issue. However, it still confuses me whether I would be charged when come up with an idea, which has already been published by other people.