Types of Plagiarism

Plagiarism can be of different types. A plagiarist might be a thief or an innocent who has accidentally made a mistake and forgot to cite properly. But all types of plagiarism have one thing in common. They are illegal.

A simple way to avoid any type of plagiarism is,

1. To not copy someone else’s ideas without attribution or consent.
2. To not steal (or copy) others' else’s words without attribution. and giving citations properly.
3. Giving sources carefully.

Here are the mention of all possible types of plagiarism you can commit accidentally or intentionally.

#01. Accidental plagiarism

Many students don't even know while they commit plagiarism unintentionally. Since the digital content has grown so much, you can easily lose track of the links you have gathered information from. Also, without having proper knowledge of citation and quoting, you can fall into the trap of accidental plagiarism.

#02. Plagiarism through Paraphrasing

While one is Writing an original work after manipulating the original work, it is called paraphrasing. It means you are intentionally trying to hide the originality of the work. This can be a case of plagiarism if you have not taken the original creator's consent or (and) you are not citing him properly.

#03. Self-plagiarism

Using your own words (or a big chunk of previously submitted work) in a newly submitted work is called self-plagiarism. The idea is, to stay transparent in doing what you do. You are advised to cite your previously published work in the same manner you cite someone else's work.

#04. Direct plagiarism

Directly copying and pasting else's work is called direct plagiarism. You can consider this example to understand direct plagiarism.

Imagine, you saw a new website with the relevant content but you didn't find any author regarding to work. You decided to copy and paste directly without citing the author or the source.

#05. Plagiarism through Incorrect citation

Imagine the scenario again, you looked for an information again but you were unable to come up with the original author's details. You decided to give false information about the source. This is also a type of plagiarism.

This way, you are misleading the readers that your work has a support proof which is actually not present.

#06. Mosaic Plagiarism 

Just like paraphrasing, when you try to copy multiple pieces of paragraphs to create a new one, it is called mosiac plagiarism. Plagiarism checkers like Turnitin and other Turnitin alternative can easily recognise this type of plagiarism.

 photo credit: wikimedia/licence: Erika.Eunice [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons