When Jayson Blair, a former NY Times columnist, was contacted by National Editor of the newspaper, little did he know that his myriad acts of plagiarism and fabrication were soon to be unearthed in due course and the newspaper was poised to publish a special story on him, describing the incident as a new low in the publication’s history. As a consequence, the managing editor of NY Times who worked in supervisory capacity for Jayson and his colleagues was dismissed, not to mention Jayson’s journalistic career came to an abrupt closure.
Jayson Blair’s case is one of the worst journalistic scandals that still do the rounds on the web. In case you do not intend to do a Jayson Blair, or a Timothy S. Goeglein (the former White House Aide and News-Sentinel columnist who resigned from his post following allegations of plagiarism), you need to take help of technologies to make your write-ups plagiarism free, and possibly immune to plagiarism.
How technologies can aid in making writings plagiarism-free?
In the pre-internet era, students used to take resort to various devious means to do less work and get more marks, except that they did not have this very powerful tool – internet. However, with the advent of internet, students tried new ways to game their examiners and in many cases, they succeeded in doing so.
The only way to combat such attempts to plagiarize is to use the internet and internet-based tools only. In a way, the very solution of internet aided plagiarism lies deep within the web only. There are web-based plagiarism checkers that work wonders when it comes to detecting plagiarism. You can just go online and find a plagiarism checker that can help you stay away from such practices.
Some dangerous trends that indicate the doom of academic sanctity
An independent research study conducted by an internet plagiarism prevention organization revealed some facts that might well raise concerns from all corners. The key findings of the research study are as follows:
- Plagiarism is getting ‘consent’ on social platforms:It is now quite normal in the social networking and open-source forums to copy or ‘share’ works of other people. Speaking to real people, the organization came to know that plagiarism is no more a taboo on these social media sites and forums and people do not anymore hesitate to ‘copy’ and ‘paste’. It seems that the trend has made inroads in the academic sphere as well.
- 15% of plagiarized content is sourced from ‘paper mills’: In an insanely outsource-dependent academic world, it is no wonder why many students each year get caught for submitting papers that were not written by them (and possibly by some overseas ghost writer) and contain plagiarized content. Paper mills have mushroomed, fostering the growth of a shoddy secondary industry of ghostwriting.
How not to become aJayson Blair, or a Timothy S. Goeglein, or a Janet Dailey?
It’s easy not to join the club of the infamous plagiarism artists who were caught at some point in their career. Use proper citation, do your own research and use technologies in form of plagiarism checkers to your advantage. Oh yes, do not outsource!
Prepared using the http://contentplagiarismchecker.com/
