Plagiarism: Does it matter if we credit other people or is it just a formality?

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Yes, giving credit matters because plagiarism is akin to academic theft! Honesty is a very strong virtue in every occupations and lifestyles. More importantly academic community tries to enforce honesty in order to maintain high level of performance and originality of work output. Nevertheless, dishonesty pervades contemporary environments in form of improper documentation of citations of the work of others. This is even more serious in academic community and as in information arena. During my undergraduate class, I once read a comment about plagiarism from the lecture note on research methodology of a colleague. The comment read thus: “Stealing from one author is plagiarism, stealing from many authors is research”. Now, this assertion has gone with the wind because I know better. I wish I could see that colleague of mine now and tell him a different story. Going by experiences from real life situations, “stealing” the work of others is nothing but plagiarism irrespective of the source and/or the number of authors one “steals” from excepted the source is properly referenced. Responsibility to proper documentation is not just for the sake of academic integrity. Giving credit to others is a form of secret handshake for the information obtained from their work. Giving credit is academic norm that has to be respected and religiously practiced. It is imperative that others be credited for their work. Crediting sources of information goes beyond formality to integrity and hence, originality of work output. Credit to the work of others displays a high level of integrity to oneself, integrity to the community of scholars and integrity to audience of the article.