Plagiarism is a topic that provokes intense reactions. Whether in the restricted environment of the classroom or in a broader context of scientific communication, one is not indifferent to cases of plagiarism, which generates frustration, indignation and even more serious feelings of outrage. Perhaps that is the reason why the discourse about this practice is so rich in metaphors and analogies: in the articles in this debate, by Newton Narciso Gomes Junior, Hélder Boska de Moraes Sarmento, and Paulo Rogério Meira Menandro, plagiarism is treated as an “act of villainy”, “fraud scam”, “falsification”, “prey”, “usurpation”, “corruption”, “artífice”, “dissimulation”, “illicit solution”, and “intellectual fraud”. These are expressions also found in the literature on the topic and often the semantic field of adjectives that qualify plagiarism is the same as those that describe the crime, although our bet is to treat it not as an object of criminal sanctions, but as an ethical violation.
