Example: In November of 2000 I wrote an article in my professional association’s newsletter dealing with the subject of Employees vs. Independent Contractors. In the article I covered the distinctions between these two categories of practitioner in terms of benefits, possible exploitation and other implications including collective bargaining rights. See http://www.ric.edu/jriolo/November%202000%20FOCUS.htm . Recently colleagues alerted me to an article in my professional association’s National newsletter of a Law Note on the subject and it covered some of the same issues.
However that to me is one of those cases of Jungian Synchronicity and nothing more can or should be made of the matter. First, there is no evidence that anyone in my professional organization actually read what I wrote at the time. Even if some did, the authors of the law note are attorneys and I am a mere social worker. And this is my professional organization that represents me. It would be unthinkable. So to my colleagues who brought this to may attention, I can only say in the words made popular by The Sopranos, “foggetabotit”. Besides I am no longer concerned with peer advocacy, but consumer advocacy. It’s their issue now.
Why would anyone take the work of others and present it as their own? There is no simple answer. There may be as many reasons as there are for so many other activities people do puzzling things. For me however I think it helps to look at as two main types of plagiarism, hard plagiarism and soft.
Hard plagiarism is the intentional and deliberate taking of other work and passing it off as your own. It could be a student who has an assignment due and failed to do their homework. And it is so easy. It could be a would-be novelist whose dreams are larger than their talent. Or, it could be a university professor faced with the publish or perish crunch for tenure or promotion. Until recently someone might be able to sense or have a feeling that something was not quite right but it was difficult to prove and can lead to messy accusations. Consequently, we often give the alleged plagiary the benefit of doubt. However, the same technology that makes it easier to do also is now making it less difficult to detect. There are computer programs that can analyze documents for word and phrase similarities etc. In colleges and universities the problem is becoming so concerning that more and more schools and faculty are either employing these programs or seriously considering it.
The second type, soft plagiarism, is unintentional. If you have read through literally hundred of documents and manuscripts in researching a subject, after a while it becomes difficult to be clear on what ideas, concepts and words are yours from your long list of sources. Unless you are a rare genius, just about everything we have thought of came from someplace. Unintentional errors are understandable.
The difference is that in hard plagiarism, if you are caught, they usually gotcha. Like a fingerprint, if there enough points of congruence it difficult to refute. You are then at the mercy of the proper owner of the product.
Soft plagiarism is often both preventable and easy to fix if it occurs. If you think that possibly what you wrote might have been the result of someone else’s hard work, throw a little credit to the “other guy”. It costs you NOTHING. A footnote, citation or reference takes but a minute or two. If and when the other guy sees it you have made their day. You have won a friend. To any author to see their work recognized is better than money. Now, as I write this, I am wondering how many times I might have failed to follow my own advice unintentionally. How many of my ideas inspirations that came from un- mentioned giants who came before me? So to anyone reading this who may recognize something of theirs in anything I have ever written but did not see credit, my apologies. But I can fix it. If you can show me where an idea, concept or quote belonged to you or anyone with out proper citation. I will rectify the matter immediately.
