Plagiarism vs Copyright: What’s the Difference?

By Brenda Ulrich

When someone copies your work without your permission, is that plagiarism or copyright infringement?  These terms are often used interchangeably, but in fact they do not mean the same thing.

Plagiarism is passing off someone else’s ideas or work as your own, without proper credit. But there may be no direct copying involved – it could just be paraphrasing an idea from someone else’s publication.  The main offense is the failure to provide attribution. Plagiarism is not illegal, but it is certainly an offense in academia, often with severe academic consequences, e.g., a failing grade for a student, revocation of a job offer, and so forth.

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Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: October 22, 2021

Stephen Mitchell once said, “Education is no longer thought of as a preparation for adult life, but as a continuing process of growth and development from birth until death.” In this week’s collection of articles from around the web, we see insight into that continuous process from the writing and research perspective.

We begin with an understanding of academic writing, look at challenges with research funding, explore proper citation to avoid plagiarism, and examine ways to increase productivity by using our analyzer switch.

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On plagiarism

Years ago now, when I worked at the Sweetland Writing Center at the University of Michigan, we hosted a large conference called, “Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism,” to place “plagiarism in dialogue with notions of originality and imitation” (3) [1]. In the years since, as I work with departments to integrate writing across the disciplines and with graduate students and faculty to publish in their fields, I find myself continuing to think about how we can do a better job teaching these three cornerstones.

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Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: April 12, 2019

This week’s quote – “Plagiarism: Getting in trouble for something you didn’t do.” – comes from an unknown source, but as often seems to be the case, the articles in our collection from around the web seem to have kindly fallen in line with this academic pun.

While our collection doesn’t have anything to do with the true definition of plagiarism, it does have a lot to do with the concept of getting in trouble for something you didn’t do. Specifically, problems or challenges may arise if you don’t check an index properly, if you don’t adequately prepare for a thesis proposal defense, if you don’t accept the dissertation publication requirement, if you don’t follow a traditional research path, if you don’t include your PhD on your CV (or if you do as the article discusses), if you linger in between identities during a career transition, if you don’t properly market yourself for a job, or if you don’t plan your approach attending a large conference.

As you approach your writing efforts this week, challenge yourself to not only look at accomplishing the things on your to-do list, but also examine the things that never made it there – the things that you aren’t doing that may be making your efforts more difficult than they need to be. Happy writing!

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Copyright basics: Another layer of rules for scholars

In a recent TAA webinar, Stephen E. Gillen, a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in and around the publishing business, and author of the book, Guide to Rights Clearance and Permissions in Scholarly, Educational, and Trade Publishing, shared critical information about copyright law, rights clearance, and permissions.

During the session, Gillen introduced an additional layer of rules for scholars, specifically focused on academic integrity.

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Using scholarly models for academic writing

I’m not, of course, talking about simple imitation, or worse, plagiarism: the models are not there to replace our voice, but to help us find it. Models can help provide structure and ideas that we can adapt to suit our own ends and intentions.

We have to start writing with our own vision of what we want to accomplish, and our own sense of what is important and interesting. But that’s just a jumping off point. We need to focus these general interests and ideas into a specific project.

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