PLAGIARISM OR ACADEMIC THEFT: TYPOLOGY, INDICATORS AND THE WAY OUT

The present study is purely descriptive. It has for objectives: to bring the reading audience in contact with what it entails to commit plagiarism; it thus gives the meaning of plagiarism, tries to identify the different types of plagiarism, the practices underlying it and ways to avoid it. It is found that plagiarism is of four major types, namely self-plagiarism, accidental-plagiarism, deliberate plagiarism, and cyber-plagiarism. Another finding of this research is that a good number of people plagiarise out of carelessness and ignorance of what it entails and, therefore, unintentionally even though ignorance of the law is no excuse. The effective ways to avoid plagiarism are principally to paraphrase, cite sources of information in the body of the work and reference them in Works Cited at the end following the prescribed model of reference. It is recommended that special workshops be mounted to educate students and other researchers on all necessary information concerning plagiarism and sensitize them against getting involved with plagiarism.