Plagiarism simply goes by the concept of “stealing or copying someone’s intellectual property or product without giving them the credit and presenting it as your own work.” It is, of course, a bad and unappreciated practice worldwide. You can’t put your nametag on someone else’s property either it’s intellectual or physical, it would be considered as malpractice. You have to face plenty of consequences as a result of stealing someone’s property.
The same is the case with plagiarism. You can’t include someone other’s work in your content or assignment without proper citations and consent from the actual author. If you do this it would be regarded as plagiarism. As you know, content matters a lot, these days. The importance of content in the success of a website, business, or any other thing is not deniable. High-quality content is the key. Plagiarized content or plagiarism can reverse the effect and become a roadblock in success.
Plagiarism is a huge risk these days. A lot of academic institutes penalize the people who are involved in submitting plagiarized assignments. Similarly, almost all search engines especially Google, have developed strong algorithms to identify plagiarism. Once the plagiarism is spotted Google and other search engines lower the rank of the website with plagiarized content, immediately.
We will answer the popular query “Why plagiarism is a huge risk and how to avoid it?” in this article. The consequences of plagiarism and methods to avoid it are listed below:
In this article:
Consequences of Plagiarism
If the plagiarism is identified, the freelancers involved in publishing or submitting plagiarized content could face the following consequences:
Bad Reputation
Plagiarism can affect the reputation of freelancers and also can cause a lot of harm to any career, be it a professional, academic, or even a business career. The majority of schools, colleges, universities, and publishers take plagiarism as a serious offense. In case, if plagiarism is identified or alleged while publishing, the freelancers would have to face suspension or expulsion charges.
It would also be stated as an ethical offense in their academic history. This could further result in limiting their chances of getting admission to any esteemed institution which means a compromise, somehow, on quality education. Ultimately, plagiarism can lead a person to the worst of situations as a student.
The consequences of plagiarism are not limited to students only, the damage from an allegation of plagiarism would follow a professional throughout his career. By professional, we mean job holder, business person, politician, or even a celebrity.
In some cases, the allegation of plagiarism could lead them to lose their current position. This would also limit their chances of getting a reputed position again. If the public stature of the person involved in plagiarism is quite big, then this allegation would ruin his name, career, and sometimes life.
Legal Outcomes
The allegation of plagiarism could further lead to serious legal outcomes. Copyright laws are quite strict and absolute around the world. Using another person or authority’s material without appropriate references and citations could result in serious legal actions. The actual author of an intellectual property possesses the right of suing a plagiarist.
In legal terms, violating copyright laws or doing plagiarism is regarded as a criminal offense. People who write to earn living like journalists or authors are more liable to legal suits. Those who write frequently must be extra vigilant because there is no chance of a mistake. Legal action may lead the offender to a situation where he has to compensate the offended person or authority in the form of a considerable amount of money.
This means the plagiarist may have to face monetary consequences as a result of legal action. Paying monetary penalties in return for plagiarism allegations could cause a serious financial burden. This is why everybody should avoid plagiarism.
Methods to Avoid Plagiarism
The idea of harm of plagiarism would be clear until now. Plagiarism should be avoided in any case. Some methods to avoid plagiarism are paraphrasing, plagiarism check, citation, and various others. Some of these methods are discussed in details below:
Paraphrasing
An effective way to avoid plagiarism is by paraphrasing the content. Paraphrasing means writing the main concept or idea of the content from a source in your own words. This doesn’t mean that you have to change the meaning of whole content but to write the content in your natural way of writing anything.
As from the definition of paraphrasing, it is visible that it is quite a tricky task. It needs a lot of effort to do paraphrasing and prevent it from taking shape of plagiarism because there is a very thin line to differentiate both.
A few things should be done while paraphrasing like limited use of too many similar words, use of natural writing while rewording the content, and structuring the phrases in own words. The trick about paraphrasing is altering the words without changing the real meaning of content. Another thing is to include citation about the source of information because ultimately you are still working on someone other’s concepts.
Use of Plagiarism Checkers
Another effective way to avoid plagiarism and make you content plagiarism-free is using Prepostseo duplicate content checker. You can check if there is any plagiarized content in your article or assignment with the help of plagiarism check through a plagiarism checker.
You can use plagiarism checker free online without paying any penny. There are plenty of plagiarism checkers available online. An effective tool of this type is the plagiarism checker by the PrePostSEO website.
You just have to upload or paste the content online and you will get to know about the uniqueness of your content easily in just a few seconds of time. This tool also lets you compare your content with the original source to know about the similarity of content. After getting the detailed analysis of content you can change or reword the content to remove plagiarism from it.
The Takeaway
We have discussed the consequences of plagiarism that makes it a big risk to the careers and lives of freelancers. We have also discussed some effective methods to avoid plagiarism and create plagiarism free content. We still recommend that the best way to avoid plagiarism is to work on your own ideas which also ensures the quality of content. Creativity is the key!