I had a harrowing experience last night. I was perusing the web for an article I'd written recently on search engine optimization to see how many pick-ups it had gotten. Unlike previous article checks, this time I used the article title, "The Rhetoric of SEO" instead of my name as author for the Google search. Well, guess what? As I happily examined the pickups, most of which gave me proper credit as author as well as links to our site, I came upon one forum entry that used the exact title of my article, and verbatim text of a portion of it. And, here's the clincher: it was posted by a forum administrator who presented it as his or her own work.
This is theft. Plain and simple. And unfortunately, the Internet is rife with it. The cyber-thieves gamble on the numbers game: with the sheer massive volumes of material on the Internet, what are the chances that the author will find her plagiarized work? So now the question becomes, what can be done about it?
First, if you are a website owner or webmaster, populate your site with good, quality content that you either create yourself, pay someone to create for you, or use material from public access sites. If you do use such material, make sure you follow the terms of service guidelines or you can find yourself in a heap of trouble.
Or suppose you find other information or articles that you would like to publish, and it is not in a free access zone, so to speak. You must contact the author of the article and ask for permission to publish the article. And when you do publish it, you must give the author the proper credit. It's just this simple: if you have any doubt about whether you need the author's permission, just go ahead and request it. Always ask FIRST, and publish later!
If you include information on your web site such as statistics or someone else's ideas, then cite the material. Always give credit to the source of those things that are not your own. In addition, instead of copying and pasting material in verbatim from another source, even if you are planning to give the author credit, paraphrase it instead. And, even though paraphrased, still include the proper citation. As for what citation format to use, your best bet is to select the one most frequently used for your discipline or business area, and then do a Google search on it. Some of the more commonly used ones are APA (American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), and the Chicago Manual of Style. Most colleges and universities have ample material to guide you through the creation of proper citations.
Second, if you are a contributor to forums, listservs, newsgroups, etc., never, never, never present anyone else's words as your own. It is downright unethical, and just remember: what goes around comes around.
Third, if you are an author, make it a habit to peruse the web at least once a week to see where your work has been picked up. Perform three searches: one on your name; one on the title of the article; and one on a unique string of words from the article that you put in quotes in the search box. If you find that your work has been used without permission or proper credit, take immediate action by first contacting the plagiarizer, and then the administrators of the site. But a caveat here, as angry as you may be, and believe me, I know what that anger feels like, try to be courteous and professional in your dealings, but at the same time, firm about your request to either have your material removed or the proper credit noted.
When I discovered my plagiarized work, I immediately wrote to the person who posted it, and made a post on the forum announcing the plagiarism. The forum was attached to a website, but it had no contact information, and was not US-based. In addition, the "thief" was from India. Though I wanted to raise Cain with the web site owners/administrators, I had to be satisfied with having my work removed from the site within an hour of my email and posting. Hopefully, at least, this thief won't strike again, but something tells me not to be so optimistic.
Mary Anne Donovan is both a scholar and a practitioner, a balance that "gives me the best of both worlds: the theory behind digital communications and the hands-on experience to know what really works and what doesn't." She is in her tenth year as a professor of technical writing and business communications while at the same time serves as Vice President and Director of U.S. Operations for SEO Literacy Consultants, Inc., a search engine optimization consulting and training company. Mary Anne has worked with computers since they first came out of the closet and into more general application, starting with computerized quality control systems for Kodak photographic and printing processes and now with the fine points of SEO theory and application.
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