People’s Reflections is a platform made for people where everyone can express their views, opinions, and thoughts on various subjects. Our mission is to encourage and connect people to share knowledge, appreciate writers, and create opportunities for curious minds. The proficiency of thoughtful writers if supported by our platform can create an exceptional foundation in the literary world. The sole provision is that the content of our writers shall be original by all means. Yet, in recent times, we have noticed an increasing number of unethical writing practices that can severely harm the uniqueness and integrity of entire writing community. There has been a massive upsurge in cases related to plagiarism on our writing platform.

Plagiarism is described as copying someone else’s work or concepts as your own, without giving complete acknowledgment. With the plentiful resources currently available to people in this digital era, plagiarism has become an extending issue. However, numerous people merely have an unclear idea about plagiarism. It reaches many forms, some more extreme than others, and the following are the few standard forms of plagiarism that Oxford University talks about.

• Verbatim or word-for-word quotation without clear acknowledgment.
• Cutting and pasting from any internet sources.
• Paraphrasing the work of others by adjusting a few words and changing their order or by closely following the format of the statements.
• Collusion involves unauthorized collaboration between any author and any other person without any pre-information.
• Incorrect citation of any phrases.
• Not clearly acknowledging all the assistance that has contributed to the content.
• Uninformed use of material written by professional agencies and the use of content that has been written for you by others.
• Publishing work that has been already submitted or published, which is also referred to as auto or self-plagiarism.

It is necessary to understand that plagiarism can take distinct forms, from intentional duplications to accidentally copying from a source without any acknowledgment. Ultimately, whenever you use the words or ideas of another person in your work, you must acknowledge where they come from. At the same time, it is also significant to think briefly about the state of mind of the original creator of whatever content you steal. And if you plagiarize the merited work of others, you may be thoughtfully hurting that creator from a personal and financial point of view by not giving the proper credit that the author deserves. The innovative writers who make their living through their content may face major losses if their original work is stolen and duplicated for the public. And the original content will never have the same impact as it will lose its uniqueness once it’s plagiarized. Writers who plagiarize, disrespect the efforts of original creators by failing to acknowledge their hard-earned contributions. It also discourages the readers from tracing ideas back to their original sources and unfairly ignores those who accomplished the effort to complete their own work. Content creation is filled with a lot of such actions with hard work and time. It’s not just about the long hours of research, writing, and editing. It is the always-on mode for creativity, and imagination, looking for sense and inspiration even in the slightest of moments. And that’s why it looks shady and disgraceful if all the hard-earned content is plagiarized efficiently considering the struggles and efforts of the people of our writing community.

Deliberately copying other Authors’ work and manipulating it to gain credit is ethically wrong and there’s no learning and valuable knowledge in the process. Basically, if you are stealing words and ideas from others, your own creativity is not being tested. As a result, you will never learn. Further, even if you are caught plagiarizing, the damage isn’t undone. It is important to understand that plagiarism is considered a type of ‘Intellectual Theft’. It is not a victimless crime and it can have some serious legal implications as well. In fact, plagiarizing someone’s work can be an extremely costly offense that can lead to legal action and even the loss of a career in the professional world. While some normal cases involving plagiarism are in abundance, legal cases are even more so. You can go through some following famous examples of legal cases regarding plagiarism.

• Kaavya Viswanathan and the story of her Novel: A famous novelist and Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan was accused of plagiarizing from a young-adult fiction in her novel ‘How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.’ Her novel contained several passages that were similar to two books ‘Sloppy Firsts’ and ‘Second Helpings’ by Megan F. McCafferty. Kaavya Viswanathan and the publishing house of her novel were accused of plagiarism by Megan F. McCafferty.
  
  
• Professor Pental Vs Professor P Parthasarthy: Mr. Pental is a noted researcher and expert in the field of science and has reportedly published more than 60 research papers. However, the former vice-chancellor of Delhi University was arrested on a petition by Professor P Parthasarthy, who had accused him of illegally plagiarising his paper on biotechnology and stealing some chemical substance. And amid the action, Pental was also sent to jail by a city court for a certain time in this case of alleged plagiarism and forging.
  
  
• The Plagiarism in The News York Times: Jayson Blair, a content editor at New York Times was engaged in intellectual fraud daily, and the worst part is that it was ‘intentional’. When the investigators reviewed his work, they discovered a lot of plagiarized data. The authorities at NYT handled this issue in a legal matter, however, the unqualified content that entered the NYT came as massive damage to the company.
  
  
• Joe Biden and the plagiarised speech: Joe Biden was once accused of Plagiarism, proclaimed guilty, and forced to remove himself from a presidential election campaign in the earlier years of his political career. He himself also accepted the plagiarism that he did in one of his political speeches. And now even years later, the former vice president’s involvement in plagiarism keeps coming into the spotlight in his political career.

Perhaps analyzing these real-life cases of plagiarism can further highlight the significance of avoiding plagiarism. In recent years, plagiarism rates have been expanding gradually. And as a result, many literary institutions, universities, and government organizations have started taking strict actions to resist it. The penalties and punishments are different as per the patterns of plagiarism. Accordingly, one can state that there are people with a tendency to violate laws, yet, there are certain regulations that are there to prevent such activities. And as liable writers and readers, it is more of a duty of all of us to preserve dignity, honesty, and righteousness in our work.

We at People’s Reflections, assure you that we have set ourselves on a path that will make our writing platform a safer and more orderly place for all writers and readers. And thus, we request to avoid plagiarism from all the people who are associating with us on this path. And if you have confronted any type of situation related to plagiarism or have opinions and queries regarding what constitutes plagiarism, please feel free to contact us. People’s Reflections is here to support you in your writing profession, and we hope we can withstand issues like plagiarism by supporting each other and making our writing community a thriving and secure place for all writers and readers.

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