Re: Topic 1 DQ 2

GCU resources define plagiarism as the use of another person’s thoughts, words, ideas, quotations, phrases, etc. without giving proper acknowledgement to where the information came from. This could mean taking an exact quote and not giving the original author credit for it. This could mean taking some information from a source, putting it into your own words, and not citing where you got the information from. A third example of plagiarism is not citing correctly. All of these are serious offenses that could lead to failure of the assignment or more serious- getting expelled from school and not receiving your BSN. It is important to always give credit to where the credit is due. In the nursing profession, plagiarism happens quite frequently. Peggy Ward-Smith defines it as “scientific misconduct,” which includes the “fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or deception in proposing, carrying out or reporting results of research, and deliberate, dangerous or negligent deviations from accepted practice” (2016, p. 1). She continues to say that 98% of article retractions are due to plagiarism and 8.8- 26.4% of graduate nursing students self-report plagiarism (Ward-Smith, 2016). A few ways to avoid plagiarizing according to GCU resources include summarizing, paraphrasing, and/or quoting the original source, which are defined below. I plan to use all three of these things to ensure academic integrity in my work.

Summarizing is taking the original thought/idea and making it your own by using your own words. It specifically focuses on the main idea or the main argument in the piece of writing. Normally, a summary is much shorter than the original thought/idea.

Paraphrasing is when you replicate the exact content of the author’s original thought/idea using your own words. When paraphrasing, your idea should typically be just as long, if not longer than the ideas/thoughts of the original author’s.

For both summarizing and paraphrasing, you would want to say whose work you are referring to in the beginning, and at the end, you would want to source the original document.

Quoting is when you take a quote directly from the original piece of writing and put it into your paper. You would put this in quotations. It is a word for word phrase copied directly from the original author. You should not use quoting that often. It should only be used occasionally.

GCU resources also say that one thing that does not need to be cited is “common knowledge.” This refers to information that can easily be found in several sources.

In Peggy Ward-Smith’s article “Evidence-Based Nursing: When the Evidence Is Fraudulent,” she says there are two organizations that monitor publication fraud and scientific misconduct. These two organizations are: The Committee on Publication Ethics and The Retraction Watch (2016, p. 2). It is important to used evidence-based practice in the healthcare field as it allows healthcare individuals to make appropriate decisions and provide the best care possible to our patients. The initiative to use evidence-based practice began in the early 90s according to Ward-Smith (2016, p. 2). Plagiarizing can have put a negative effect on the public’s perception of nursing. If we plagiarize something, the public and our patient’s will not trust us. Being honest is part of being a good nurse in my opinion. Honesty and transparency are two things that healthcare individuals should possess, also in my opinion.

References

GCU youtube video player. (n.d.). Retrieved February 22, 2021, from https://www.gcumedia.com/youtube/v1.1/#/?list=PLIP5_iaUyziU2URMjUIHGubHcy3GvGcLj

Ward-Smith, P. (2016). Issues. Evidence-Based Nursing: When the Evidence Is Fraudulent. Urologic Nursing, 36(2), 98–99. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.7257/1053-816X.2016.36.2.98

Typically the APA Reference Page would have a centered title and the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. lines of each source should be indented. It will not allow me to indent in here. Thank you.