Plagiarism Again...

It's been quite a while I didn't write about plagiarism. Plagiarism is now a hot issue in Kompasiana. The opinion about plagiarism came out after the issue of plagiarism by a professor from a reputable private university that came out in the printed Jakarta Post. Is it unintentional? Is it an editorial oversight or a lack of concern? Another citizen wrote in Kompasiana about the serious danger of keeping it as a culture.

My writing on plagiarism for wikimu.com had received some reactions, yet I like the reaction from Kurniawan Djunaedhi. He was not aware that his writing came out in another printed media under the name of another person until he read my post in wikimu. Although at first his reaction is "no comment", but now he posted three postings under the label plagiat in his blog. So, he finally found out that Abi, who used his writing, is doing plagiarism. I think it is important that we educate youngsters. Let plagiarism happened and acted as if nothing happened, or depending on one's self conscience won't help us gain a better younger generation.

Actually there was another case of plagiarism that I found out from printed Kompas. An artist that I've known wrote about how an article on art was probably being written with his thesis as one of bibliography without mentioning it. He knew that the writer had read his writing. The answer from the writer of the article said that they were using the same sources of information, and he didn't need to quote that artist's paper as he used the same source of bibliography (he made it sounded that the research of his fellow Indonesian is not important as he found it out himself through studying the same bibliography). I only read the article published in that printed newspaper and I haven't read the paper from that artist, so I sent a letter to the artist asking for his comment after reading the answering note from that writer. I did link my concern about plagiarism that I wrote for wikimu. He never answered that e-mail. I thought he was just letting the case go and put it to the writer's self conscious (who, at that time, is a lecturer of a well known art academy) and to the scrutiny of the public.

Now that this case happened in an English newspaper, and the paper used by the writer is a copy from the paper of an Australian writer... then everybody are screaming about plagiarism. May be the article I've mentioned in the previous paragraph was not copying the paper of the artist whom I've known as a photographer, but writing it after reading the paper without mentioning that paper is not an ethical approach (in my perspective). Actually I did not write about it as the artist didn't reply my e-mail, but it kept bothering me...

Now that the issue of plagiarism is blown up in the newspapers, I think we should really try to educate youngsters on the ethic of writing and quoting. It's not because I'm an expert on it, but because I think it is important for the nation's future. I'll keep myself learning...