Plagiarism – The Ultimate Taboo

April 8, 2010

The output of our Clickworkers is just like newspaper articles, paintings, or musical composition: Nobody wants to pay for a valuable original just to receive a cheap imitation. Plagiarism in all its forms is a topic that just doesn’t seem to go away.

Each time when you as a Clickworker accept a task to create a text your work instructions will include language such as this: “IMPORTANT: Write the text completely from scratch. Do not adopt sentences or paragraphs from other jobs or texts. Do not submit slightly changed versions of existing texts. This will be viewed as fraud.”

Don’t take this subject lightly! Submission of a ripped off text is the worse thing you can do to your reputation and assessment as a Clickworker. It generally will result in your no longer being eligible to accept tasks in an area such as text creation. Don’t even think about taking this shortcut – sooner or later it will come back to haunt you. Each and every article submitted to us are being systemically checked for plagiarism. The system we utilize – called CopyScape – can identify even the most cleverly disguised attempts of plagiarism.

This of course doesn’t mean that you cannot do research on Wikipedia or other websites. After all, the submitted text needs to have reliable and factual information. But don’t succumb to the temptation to copy whole passages or sentences directly to the text. Instead, extract the core of the information from the source and then construct your text using your own words. This will satisfy all parties: The client gets the required outcome, we get the required quality, and you keep a clear conscience.

Daniel Marz

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