Written by Octavia, 2021 Cohort
Written by Octavia Wang
Plagiarism can be a very sensitive topic for any university in the world. But after I glanced at the related documents in both SFU and my bachelor‘s school, I found that Plagiarism is valued differently in North America and China. In this blog entry, I will list some of the obvious differences based on my own learning experience and official public documents.
The different definitions of plagiarism
Plagiarism is carefully defined in SFU, On the SFU official website, plagiarism behaviour is divided into three main sections which are “Misrepresenting someone else’s work as your own; Copying sentences or paragraphs without properly citing their source and Paraphrasing incorrectly”. The first part is relatively easy to understand and it’s similar to our traditional recognization of plagiarism, but rest two sections are sometimes hard to be notified and easy to cause unintentional plagiarism. However, when I read the Interim Measures on Handling of Dissertation Plagiarism from the China Ministry of Education, the definition of plagiarism is blurred. The report, states that if there is buying and selling, copying or ghostwriting phenomenon appears in an academic paper, punishments will follow. But the document didn’t delineate the scope of plagiarism and didn’t mention any requirements regarding citation.
The same level of severe consequences
Plagiarism is traded very seriously in SFU, the student who has academic dishonesty could receive server punishment which would probably range from a reprimand to failure in a course, to even suspension. While I was searching online, I saw a couple of college students made confesses to being caught by the professor with their cheating behaviour in papers, few of them was be forgiven by their prof. and got zero in that course, but most of the time, they had to meet the dean who would give them a medium penalty, probation or even expel. Those records will follow them for a long time that they were even not able to find an internship or apply for the higher level study. In China, punishments for plagiarism will also be harsh. And these penalties are not just for students who are academically dishonest, but also for their mentors, according to the government’s regulations.
Extra information
In my university, there are usually two types of papers, one is the academic paper, while the other is the artwork paper which is common for art students. The difference is that artwork paper normally will be linked to a self artwork, to discuss the valuable conclusion summarized from the process of creation. This type of paper makes it more difficult for students to commit plagiarism, but it must be submitted at the same time as the corresponding work.
Resources link:
https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/academic-integrity/plagiarism#what-are-the-consequences-of-plagiarism
http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/moe_1946/s6197/201207/t20120716_139366.html