Are You an Unwitting Plagiarist?

"Plagiarism is essentially defined as the use of someone else's content without giving them their due credit."- InstaText

Plagiarism is also against Vocal's Community Guidelines.

What Was That All About?

The information above is both factual and attributed. I attributed it in several ways, including quotations, stating the source, and linking the source.

Attributing the source of content used within your own creation is required. Not including it is plagiarism. This piece will contain selected information obtained from several sources; this is one that I found most useful and recommend for additional comprehensive information.

Attribution isn't just required, it is also the right thing to do AND has SEO benefits for you! This article will cover plagiarism, attribution, Vocal requirements, and some online tools.

Plagiarism

"There's nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know."- Ambrose Bierce

Most plagiarism that I've seen on Vocal and other platforms fall into one of the following two types: Direct and Mosaic (aka patchwork plagiarism).

Plagiarism can be DIRECT: copying and pasting something and affixing your name to it. (Example: I saw the script of Frozen on Vocal, presented by a creator into the Fiction Community. It included both stage direction and stage movements. I also saw a full Robert Frost poem with a Vocal creator's name on it. Both examples are longer on the Vocal platform.)

Plagiarism can be MOSAIC or Patchwork: changing a few words/names/places and surrounding work by someone else with a little bit of your work. Unless you are familiar with the work (and in some cases you actually see your OWN work being used!) this can be hard to detect. It is also distressingly easy for people to do, so read on for ways not to fall into the Mosaic plagiarism trap!

Attributions= Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

There are plenty of ways to attribute

• content that inspired you
• that wrote the words you insert into your work
• that sparked your idea
• that can give additional context to your work

My personal rule of thumb is to use the Vocal 'quote' tool to highlight content if it is just a few lines or paragraph. Then I either call out who created the content leading into the highlighted content, or within it as I did with the Ambrose Bierce quote above. Follow these directions and the image below to create a block quote for that type of quoting attribution:

1. Type the text, the left click and highlight the text.
2. Click on the quotation marks (see below) and the words will become italicized and have the line to the left of the words.

For more extensive content, such as referring to Vocal's Community Guidelines, I briefly introduce it and then embed a link.

If I am simply referring to content, I'll add a hyperlink to the words I use, as I do below when referring to Vocal's Community Guidelines.

Vocal's Original Content Requirements

Vocal's Community Guidelines calls out the expectations regarding original content. Specifically:

1. You can use content you've written yourself and previously posted elsewhere. (Example: cross posting your own Substack or Medium content on Vocal. Pro Tip- it's good form to state within the content or as a note at the end that it was originally posted elsewhere by YOU.)
2. You can critique or parody content written by someone else, providing proper attribution and following the Fair Use Doctrine. (Example- this would be used, perhaps, when you create content for the new Book Club Community).
3. Even if you do properly attribute (and I KNOW you will!), you must have at least 50% of the story/content your OWN work. (Example: you couldn't make a poem with the majority of the content excerpts from favorite poets, just switched around in a new order of your devising. Although now that I have typed that out it DOES seem like a pretty cool idea! In order to make that work you would need to add an explanation that could include why you did it, how you thought of it, why you think it's interesting, etc.)

Online Tools

Vocal announced via the Creator Discord channels that they are implementing tools to reduce the amount of spam and plagiarism. It's likely that the tools will need to be calibrated and tweaked during that process, and the eventual result will be less spammy content crowding out actual Creator content on the site.

If you find content that you suspect to be plagiarized there are tools online to assist you. Here are a few:

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I see non-attributed AI AND AI-generated material that makes up the majority of a story/article/poem as plagiarism! It's using created content that the Vocal member did not write and passing it off as their own work. Here's what I do about it:

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