SQLRNNR (5/22/2015)

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Jason A. Long (5/22/2015)

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Grant Fritchey (5/22/2015)

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Question for the crew since this is a fairly international audience, plagiarism

I understand that some cultures look at it very differently than most Western European-based ones do. There's the whole "I'm showing respect by not altering your words" thing, that I actually understand. BUT, does that mean that you're showing respect by lifting the entire work? You like my script for querying the XML in a query plan so you use it in a presentation. I get it. Attribution would be nice, but not the end of the world. You like my presentation on execution plans so you copy the entire thing and start submitting it to SQL Saturday events, SQLBits, whatever, I'm not really down with that. I have a hard time believing that any culture would be. Am I wrong? Educate the stupid 'Merican please.

I'm bringing this up because I'm aware of two different incidents recently from two different countries, one decidedly Western-oriented, the other mostly so, where people have just been lifting entire presentations and abstracts and submitting them to events without permission or even informing the owner of the material. That just smacks of a clear wrong that no one should need to be told. But, maybe I'm just ignorant.

I tend to think of in terms of writing a college paper... Get caught plagiarizing there, and it's grounds for immediate expulsion and the end of your academic career.

If you quote another author, make sure the audience knows it's quoted material and cite the author & work that the quote was taken from. If the idea is an amalgamation or simple rephrasing of one or more authors, let that be known as well, and again, cite the author(s) and the works that went into the idea.

If you're going to claim something as a completely original idea... Make damn sure no one can prove the contrary...

Just my 2 cents...

Just a further note on quoting another's work. This is good up to the point where the entire work is quoted. Even with attribution, you just can't take and cite that much from another person. If 20% of your presentation ( article, book, etc) is cited from somebody else, then you are plagiarizing their work still. You have to get approval from the person to use that much material.