OK let's take this slowly.
What's wrong with Bobby Elliott's definition?
He says:
"Plagiarism is the use of another person's work (this could be their words, products or ideas)
for personal advantage without proper acknowledgment of the original work with the intention of
passing it off as your own. Plagiarism may occur deliberately (with the intention to deceive) or
accidentally (due to poor referencing)."
The first sentence claims that plagiarism is where there exists, "the intention of passing it off
as your own".
The second sentence claims that plagiarism may happen unintentionally - "accidentally".
Plagiarism - or anything else for that matter - cannot be defined as ONLY intentional and also
POSSIBLY unintentional.
Plagiarism may be both intentional AND unintentional.
For more clarification on the definition see my article at:
http://www.ltu.mmu.ac.uk/ltia/issue4/johnston.shtml
Let's have a bit more rigour in our definitions. Students are confused enough without us making it
worse.
Wm Johnston
Manchester Metropolitan University
*************************************************************************
You are subscribed to the JISC Plagiarism mailing list. To Unsubscribe, change
your subscription options, or access list archives, visit
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/PLAGIARISM.html
*************************************************************************
|