Blog #3, Plagiarism tutorial

Question 3, in the OSU ESL programs online plagiarism tutorial, presents an issue of a secondary citation. This problem does not consider it as plagiarism as long as we cite the source, especially in the case of rare source. I found it interesting because this problem tells and warns us exact situation and the risk ignoring citation which I have been going or doing through.

While I was writing my master’s thesis, I had to read lots of papers, and I end up distinguishing my argument from original idea and I had to make my argument specialized. I had found many nice but old references and tried to track all the sources so that I can understand my work fully. There was one interesting paper which I don’t remember exactly, but it includes an idea from one of the 1700s papers. I tried to find it, asked my school and American school to search it, but I couldn’t do it. Thus I had to give up looking at that paper and try more modern paper. This happening really bothered me since the author of the paper what I was reading didn’t give specific source but just mentioned. It remains me so long and I still don’t know what should I do in such a case? What if I had to read or want papers which are hard to find? How can I trust the author or the idea? Should I just believe it because it has been inherited? This issue stimulates me to study the subject in more depth.

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Question 6, in the OSU ESL programs online plagiarism tutorial, discusses a situation where you doubt whether one of your professors has taken your work. It proposes that you may accuse your professor of plagiarism because what you have been writing belongs to you. One of the significant features of this situation is that it might happen to me.

As a graduate student, I have many chances working with professors. It is true that the professor should be the smartest person in the group or class and the generator of idea but he or she cannot be the one always. Some smart students might come up with incredible idea. In my field, this situation happens frequently. If we, the graduate students, can’t be the informant, how can we become a professional or a doctor? As one of the professional students, I strongly agree and feel happy with the fact that we are allow to argue for the right in academic fields as the weak.