introduction

INTRODUCTION First and foremost we would like to express our gratitude towards Allah the Almighty for all His blessing and kindness upon us. We also like to thanks Dr Hikmatullah Babu Sahib for giving this opportunity for us to observe the real life event in this world. Lastly, special thanks to our group members and colleagues for their cooperation and contribution to complete this assignment about plagiarism in International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) directly or indirectly. The objective of our assignment as said by Dr Hikmatullah Babu Sahib is to do the research about plagiarism in IIUM. This is to ensure that the top management of IIUM will be more alert and take any considerable actions to those students who are actively practicing plagiarism or cheating in the exam and also using it to complete their works or assignments with intention or without intention. First and foremost, I will explain about the term that is very important in this topic. Attribution is the acknowledgement that something came from another source. This is to tell others that the ideas and work that we have done is based on others work that we take as a references. Then, there will be a bibliography which is a list of sources used in preparing the work. Meanwhile, citation is a short, formal indication of the source of information or quoted material. It is also known as the act of quoting material that we used in our assignments. Cite is to indicate a source of information or quoted material in a short, formal note. It is also known as to ascribe something to source. Common knowledge is an information that is readily available from a number of sources or so well-known that its sources do not have to be cited. For an example, the fact that orange are a source of Vitamin C is common knowledge, thus, we can include this information in our work without attributing it to a source. However, any information regarding the effects of Vitamin C on the human body are likely to be the products of original research and would have to be cited. Besides that, we must also know about the copyright. It is a law protecting the intellectual property of individuals, giving them exclusive rights over the distribution and reproduction of that material. This means that anyone who found guilty copying others work can be charged and sentence due to copyright. Besides, endnotes is notes at the end of a paper acknowledging sources and providing additional references or information to the readers who are interested with the topic. Intellectual property is a product of the intellect, such as an expressed idea or concept that has commercial value. Moreover, facts is knowledge or information based on real, observable occurrences. However, just because something is a fact does not mean it is not the result of original thought, analysis, or research. Facts can be considered intellectual property as well. For an example, if we discover a fact that is not widely known nor readily found in several other places, we should cite the source to avoid plagiarism or stealing someone’s thought and ideas. Furthermore, original means not derived from anything else, new and unique or also known as the source from which copies are made. Besides, public domain is the absence of copyright protection; belonging to the public so that anyone may copy or borrow from it. In other words, public domain is works that are no longer protected by copyright, or never have been. This means that we may freely copy material from these works without fear of plagiarism, provided we make proper attributions. Quotation is using words from another source. Plagiarism as defined by the dictionary is an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author’s work as one’s own, as by not crediting the original author. It is also defined by the dictionary as a piece of writing or other work reflecting such unauthorized use or imitation. Besides, the University of North Carolina defined plagiarism as the deliberate or reckless representation of another’s words, thoughts, or ideas as one’s own without attribution in connection with submission of academic work, whether graded or otherwise. Moreover, it is also considered a form of cheating. There are also self-plagiarism which means copying material that we have previously produced and passing it off as a new ideas and thoughts. This can potentially violate copyright protection if the work has been published and is banned by most academic policies because it is the same thing with the cheating and theft. Moreover, all of the following are considered plagiarism such as turning in someone else’s work as your own, copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit, failing to put a quotation in quotation marks, giving incorrect information or misleading about the source of a quotation, changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit and copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of our work, whether we give credit or not. Most cases of plagiarism can be avoided and prevent by citing sources. Simply knowing that certain material or ideas has been borrowed or copied and providing our audience with the information and knowledge necessary to find that source is usually enough to prevent plagiarism. Many people think of plagiarism as copying another's work, or borrowing someone else's original ideas. But terms like "copying" and "borrowing" can disguise the seriousness of the offense. Besides, many people also are quick to make the connection between students and plagiarism, but in fact, it can be found outside of academia as well. Some of the fields most affected by plagiarism include:
• Art
• Journalism
• Music
• Pop Culture/Television
Plagiarism is evident in both journalistic work as well as academic work, and each has its own consequences. For those who commit plagiarism in journalism, the most obvious course of action is immediate dismissal from the company, as the company's reputation is in question with respect to the reading public. One such example is when someone delivered a commencement address, using quotations from some author, but without providing proper attribution as to the source of the material. Other examples, especially in the press, reporter was dismissed when he wrote a story exactly without giving proper attribution. However, when plagiarism is found within the academic world, the consequences can have more dangerous results.
Furthermore, plagiarism also is not always a black and white issue. The differences between plagiarism and research is often unclear. Thus, we need to recognize the various forms of plagiarism, especially the ambiguous ones, is an important step towards effective prevention. It is like the police who will take and consider every characteristic of the crime doers to prevent the crime. The first type is submitting another’s work, word-for-word, as one’s own. This is similar to copy and paste. Then the second type is contains significant portions of text from a single source without alterations. The third one is changing key words and phrases but retaining the essential content of the source. This is like find and replace the words with the synonym one. The fourth one is by mixing multiple sources or paraphrases from multiple sources and then made it to fit together.
Besides that, there are also the ones which combines perfectly cited sources with copied passages without citation. Then, there are also the worst one which includes citation to non-existent or inaccurate information about sources. This is same as misleading the readers with wrong information about the citation. Besides, there are also plagiarism which includes proper citation to sources but the paper contains almost no original work or relies too closely on the text’s original wording and structure. This is also categorized as a plagiarism because the framework and fundamental ideas are too much and contain very less of our own ideas and thoughts.
In other words, we can classify plagiarism into four types which is:
1) Direct plagiarism
2) Self-plagiarism
3) Mixture plagiarism
4) Accidental plagiarism
Direct plagiarism is the word-for-word transcription of a section of someone else’s work, without attribution and without quotation marks. The deliberate plagiarism of someone else's work is unethical, academically dishonest, and grounds for disciplinary actions, including expulsion.
Then, the second one is self-plagiarism. Self-plagiarism occurs when a student submits his or her own previous work, or mixes parts of previous works, without permission from all professors involved. For example, it would be unacceptable to incorporate part of a term paper you wrote in high school into a paper assigned in a college course. Self-plagiarism also applies to submitting the same piece of work for assignments in different classes without previous permission from both professors.
Then, the third one is mixture plagiarism. It is occurs when a student borrows phrases from a source without using quotation marks, or finds synonyms for the author’s language while keeping to the same general structure and meaning of the original. Sometimes called “patch writing” and this kind of paraphrasing, whether intentional or not, is academically dishonest and punishable even if we footnote our source.
The fourth one is accidental plagiarism. Accidental plagiarism occurs when a person neglects to cite their sources, or misquotes their sources, or unintentionally paraphrases a source by using similar words, groups of words, or sentence structure without attribution. Students must learn how to cite their sources and to take careful and accurate notes when doing research. Lack of intent does not absolve the student of responsibility for plagiarism. Cases of accidental plagiarism are taken as seriously as any other plagiarism and are subject to the same range of consequences as other types of plagiarism. However, paraphrasing is different with the plagiarism. Paraphrasing is a fine way to use another person’s works or ideas to support our argument as long as we attribute the material to the author and cite the source in the text at the end of the sentence. Besides that, paraphrasing means taking another person’s ideas and thought and putting those ideas in our own words. Based on dictionary, paraphrasing is a restatement of text or passage giving the meaning in another form, as for clearness; rewording. It is also defined as the act or process of restating or rewording. Paraphrasing does not mean changing a word or two in someone else’s sentence, changing the sentence structure while maintaining the original words, or changing a few words to synonyms. If we are tried to rearrange a sentence in any of these ways, this means that we are writing too close or very similar to the original one. That is plagiarizing, not paraphrasing. Moreover, we also should know about the common knowledge method. In some area, experts consider some ideas as a common knowledge. However, bear in this mind, we are not professional yet. Thus, we must acknowledge that we are just learning about those concepts so the material that we are reading may not yet be a common knowledge to us. Hence, in order to decide and detect if the material that we want to use in our project paper constitutes common knowledge, we may need to ask ourselves the following question. Did I know about this information before I took this subject? Did this ideas and thoughts come from my own brain? If the answer is no to either or both of these questions, thus, the knowledge and the ideas is not a common knowledge to us. In this cases, it is proper and a must for us to cite our sources to avoid plagiarism. Furthermore, in order to understand plagiarism, it helps to understand the process of sharing and creating ideas in the university. As we know, all knowledge is built from the previous knowledge. This means that the new knowledge is acquire by the fundamental or basic knowledge about something which is found by some scholar long time ago. Thus, as we read, study, experimenting, and gather perspectives, we are drawing on other people’s ideas and thoughts. Building on their ideas and experiences, we create our own. When we put our ideas and thoughts on project paper, actually, our lecturer want to distinguish between the original ideas and work borrowed from other people with our own newly perspectives or conclusions. Hence, we must make these distinctions in a written paper by citing the sources for the fundamental or original ideas and thoughts.
Moreover, by providing an appropriate citations will also help readers and our lecturer who are interested in our topic to find additional or related material to read. In this way, they will be able to build on the work we have done to find sources. The seriousness of this matter must be given top priority by the top management of IIUM because the solution for this problem always face the deadlock. Besides that, the students of IIUM seems to practice and use the method of plagiarism even though they already knew about the unethical practice that they were used and the consequences of this act if they were caught red handed. Every institution of higher learning will have plagiarism defined explicitly in the student handbook or in their site including IIUM. If we are currently enrolled in classes and have not yet read through what constitutes academic dishonesty in the student handbook or in their site, we need to read the policy right now. “I did not know” is not a valid excuse if we accidentally plagiarize because all students are expected to have read and agreed to the policies laid out in the student handbook or in their site before attending classes. It does not matter whether we committed plagiarism intentionally or unintentionally either. Plagiarism is plagiarism. Moreover, plagiarism is an ethical issue that are discussed by most of the people who are very concern about this matter. Plagiarism also said to be involves deception and theft. This is because plagiarism is simply taking someone’s work or ideas and passing it off as your own without any credit and proper appreciation to the original owner of the work. Besides, it is injustice and not fair or right to say that we did something when we just copied it from someone else and claim it as it was our own hard work. Furthermore, plagiarism is considered academic dishonesty and it is a serious ethical offense. Thus, there are sanctions for students from practicing plagiarism. Plagiarism can result in punishments such as a failing grade on the particular assignment, the entire course, or even being expelled from the institution. As far as I am concern, IIUM are practicing this kind of warning and punishment to their students who are caught cheating in an exam or in assignments. Hence, this is enough to prove that how bad and the awareness of some authority about the plagiarism. Integrity is an adherence to moral and ethical principles or the quality of being honest and fair. Believe it or not, an increasing number of students across the educational spectrum are consciously choosing to disregard academic honesty in favour of cheating their way to a degree or diploma. Then again, we live in the age of cheating and lying politicians, bestselling authors, and writers who are able to emerge practically unharmed among their occasionally obvious violation on established ethical policies. Moreover, the most common indication of plagiarism is when someone writes something that contains clearly different styles, such as a student essay with grammatically incorrect opening and closing paragraphs enclosing a body of text containing near perfect style. In practice, many plagiarists give themselves away in this way by copying mistakes found the source they are plagiarizing. Thus, it is very easy for a professor or a lecturer to find or to identify the student who plagiarize their work.
In an ideal world, not a single Muslim student would ever engage in such blatant misbehaviours against himself, his peers, and most importantly, Islam's rulings. However, the amount of academic misconduct found among Muslim students is astonishing and it indicates to an increasingly misbehaviour or immoral activity that are apply by the Muslim student nowadays. What does Islam say about plagiarism? When we look into this problem, we find that such behaviour is un-Islamic. Indeed, there are very good reasons why it is our Islamic duty to attribute the statements and writings of others to those who originally made those statements and composed those writings based on Surah 4, ayah 58. Indeed, Allah commands you to render trusts to whom they are due and when you judge between people to judge with justice. Excellent is that which Allah instructs you. Indeed, Allah is ever Hearing and Seeing- Surah Al-Nisa’ ayah 58. In this verse, Allah told us to render trusts to their owners. Indeed, quoting one's sources is rendering a trust. This is a religious duty commanded by Allah in the Quran. Many Muslims today, especially on the Internet, have become way too careless in taking the words of others and passing them off as their own. They often do not realize the serious consequences of what they are doing. They do not see the bad action, the serious breach of trust that their behaviour entails.
In many Islamic forums on the Internet and even established Islamic websites, we sometimes find entire articles copied verbatim from other sources without any link or reference being made to the site where it is originally published. Indeed, in all too many cases, even the article's original author is not mentioned. The worst cases of all are where the person reproducing the article tries to pass it off as his or her own. There are also same cases that involve the students which taking another one’s work as it is like their own work when doing their assignment. This misattribution to oneself of the writings of others is known today as plagiarism. Moreover, plagiarism is regarded as a crime. This is because it frees the person quoting the text from being personally held to all of its consequences and implications. If the statement is true, it keeps the person from receiving undue credit for someone else's success. If the statement is false, it prevents the person quoting it from being liable for the error. Hence, we can see that by plagiarize we can be unjust to other people.
This is one of the reasons why the Islamic science of hadith narration was developed. Indeed, Islamic civilization was the very first in the world to develop, codify and rigorous science for citing one's sources. It is within the context of the absolute science of hadith narration that it is said: "Whoever quotes you as his source has carried out his duty." This is the duty of providing the line of transmission so that the statement can be authenticated and duly attributed to its source. O you who have believed, do not betray Allah and the Messenger or betray your trusts while you know (the consequence) – Surah Al-Anfal ayah 27. Moreover, taking credit for someone else's idea is most certainly a breach of trust. It is an act of bad faith to the person whose idea or work it really is. Taking credit for someone else's words or ideas also is both an act of fraud and a deliberate lie. From all of this, we can see clearly that plagiarism is a sin and Allah knows best. There are several factors that lead to such fraud-like activities among our youth. One cannot discount the impact of culture; many of us come from cultures and societies where ignorantly thought that cheating is not perceived as a sin, but rather as a display of intelligence, innovation, and an ability to beat the system. Secondly, Muslims are not immune to society's ills, and the pressure to achieve high grades has led many of us to engage in activities that would cause our Prophet (peace be upon him and his progeny) to disown such a generation well versed in how to sneak questions into the exam hall but unaware of Islam's hatred for dishonesty. Islam demands an honest society, because it implants in us the values that dignify the character of a human. Therefore, lying and cheating are in direct contradiction with the concept that human beings are brought into this world free of fraud and deception, and as such, this precedent must be maintained throughout their lives. And a believing man from the family of Pharaoh who concealed his faith said, "Do you kill a man [merely] because he says, 'My Lord is Allah ' while he has brought you clear proofs from your Lord? And if he should be lying, then upon him is [the consequence of] his lie; but if he should be truthful, there will strike you some of what he promises you. Indeed, Allah does not guide one who is a transgressor and a liar –Surah Al-Ghafir ayah 28.
In this verse, Allah told us that He does not guide one who is a transgressor and a liar. Thus, we must by hook or by crook avoid plagiarism in our life because it is an act of dishonesty and lying to other people.
Cheating and academic dishonesty are a profound manifestation of our inability as human beings to remember God and respect our own religion. A degree or diploma is intended as a display of our knowledge and skills set, yet when we obtain this degree through cheating, copying, plagiarizing, and so on, we are merely demonstrating our ability to lie and fraudulently earn a degree which will provide us with income and sustenance.
Lying and cheating are considered among the Greater Sins that can be committed by a Muslim some scholar warns from associating and committing falsehood, "Falsehood is absolutely an evil and a sin." Indeed, deception, fraud, and lying are vices known only to those individuals who do not concern themselves with the Hereafter and the true examination we will be accountable to. Ignorance is not an excuse to continue defrauding ourselves and others, and every higher education institution has a handbook on academic misconduct or on their site. The motivation is on each and every one of us to become aware of what constitutes as cheating and deception and do our utmost to avoid it. Consider that these exams given in college are nothing compared to the final examination our souls will face on the Day of Judgement, and as the Holy Qur'an states, "O you who have believed, fear Allah and be with those who are true. – Surah At-Tawbah ayah 119. Besides that, in this assignment, we are going to discuss about the reasons of why there are some people keep practicing plagiarism while doing their works and assignments in this assignment. Besides, there will be a discussion about the consequences of plagiarism towards those people who are affected by this matter. After that, we are also going to discuss and giving the ideas of how or ways to reduce or prevent plagiarism among students. Then, there will be some research on the detection as one of prevention and how it will works in IIUM. Lastly, there are some research and study that we have conducted through surveying the student’s response and answers towards plagiarism. We will present the data collections that we got from the students, the questionnaire results, the interview results and the discussion on the finding results and answers.