You may have already heard a professor say that he or she was once suspicious enough to search for an excerpt of a student’s work online — and actually found out that it was plagiarism. You must also have heard that digital communication facilitates this misconduct by students, who, increasingly lazy, need to be punished. But this is just one side of a multifaceted issue, which still needs reflection and debate. A distinct and provocative approach to the subject can be found in this book. The authors do not define the plagiarist as a thief nor do they consider that plagiarism should be criminalized. Rather, they prefer to analyze what happens in academia and may cause such condemned and berated behavior. They thus demonstrate the need for greater awareness of ethics and academic integrity. The authors do not intend to minimize the problem of plagiarism. On the contrary: they scathingly criticize anyone who forges or signs their name using someone else’s work. The book’s unique point of view, however, is a proposal to end plagiarism that is not limited to punishment, but invites reflection. The goal is to unsettle the readers, these key actors who can be much more efficient than any plagiarism hunting software. “They [the readers] are the ones who will say if our work has something creative, unpublished, original or new. Or simply if it is worth reading”, the authors say.
