Plagiarism

Last week we dealt with another important aspect concerning sources: plagiarism. This is something we have always heard about, but we never got to analyze properly, at least at university.

The basic idea is that when writing anything, be it an academic essay, our final thesis, or any kind of research work, we can not use someone else's thoughts without pointing out that we are doing so. This is worth both in the case of quotation or reformulation of someone else's words, but also in the case of the use of images.
As far as quotations and reformulations are concerned, there are several styles of reference. We can choose the one we prefer, as long as we keep using the same. Regarding photos, there are tools which permit to share our pictures and to use other people's ones without any problem.

There are many ways to find out how to avoid plagiarism and respect copyright and IPR: as always, the Internet is the fastest solution. You can find lots of online information on these topics.

Finally, I think CONSCIENCE must be mentioned. Very often, especially in our field (and in our country), there is not sufficient control on these issues. How many times have you heard of people writing stuff just by copying and pasting here and there?? How many times we prefer easier and faster solutions?? How many times we prefer being 'furbi' than 'onesti'?? (I prefer using the Italian words here, because this two concepts, in particular the first one, are soooooo Italian...)

Let's just be honest!!!!