Blog 5:Plagiarism Tutorial

The first question I choose is that whether I need to cite if one of the members of my group gave me an interesting idea. The answer tells me that in general ideas are not considered intellectual property, but some people may think it to be plagiarism. So it should be safe to cite it as “personal communication”. The second question is that whether it is plagiarism when my professor has taken something from my own work. The answer shows that everything belonging to me, even a paper written for class is equal to published papers.

From these questions, I learned that we should be careful about plagiarism and copyright. Everything concerning other’s work, even ideas should be respected. It is safe to cite all the sources we use in my paper work and contact necessary people regarding their copyright. At the same time, we should be sensitive for our own right. If something violates our copyright happens, even from our professors, we should use proper methods to defend our right. I think as an undergraduate in engineering department, this situation could happen since we often need to write papers as assignments. We should make sure we use others’ sources properly and aren’t violated by others. Even after graduation, we may face similar situation and it is important to solve these problems in an appropriate way. However, I still have a question that how to defend my right properly and legally when confronting with my professor, since it is a dilemma for most students.