Plagiarism: It's not just for high school students

Thursday, January 16, 2014


Over the last couple years I've grown to love being a blogger. It's fun to chronicle your reading in a forum that allows others to suggest new books or share their opinions on the ones you've already read. There are a few drawbacks though. Recently I've seen a lot of people talking about plagiarism on their blogs. Shady bloggers will repost entire reviews on their sites! Seriously, who does that? 

I'm no expert, but one way I've found to check for plagiarisms to search specific phrases or set up Google Alerts for your blog name. Really in the end you just have to hope that people create their own content instead of stealing your's. 


What issues have you run into as a blogger?


Photo of my comma dog by moi.

7 comments:

Sandy Nawrot said...

Yeah, I've heard about some bloggers having huge issues. Honestly I never check with mine, but I have had authors who have come to me and told me that my review of their book was plagiarized on another site. But by the time I went to that site to see, they had taken it down. I really don't get it. Not that I get plagiarizing for school, but in that scenario they are trying to get a good grade. What are they accomplishing here? It is just laziness.

Kailana said...

There have been some big scandals over the years with plagiarism. I don't really get it and never check, but I really should. I just I just figure I don't have anything worth stealing!

Anonymous said...

For some reason, google alerts won't work for me. It either never finds anything or shows me stuff from years ago of links to my blog from blogs I know, that are legit links.

Anonymous said...

I follow Women in Hollywood and just the other day they were posting on an account of plagiarism, someone recognized a recent article they'd written on Huffington Post and attributed to another author entirely. said author and WiH had had no idea. even as jaded as I can be, I was surprised...

I get a lot of, 'hey, working on a paper, could I use this or do you have some resource ideas?'; but it has yet to occur to me to check for plagiarists.. thanks for the Grammarly idea.

~L (omphaloskepsis)

Anonymous said...

Hi Melissa,
I don't know that I've had any issues,but I haven't been on the lookout for any either. I'm probably safe due to not having content worth stealing and being a relatively small-fry operation. I guess I'm also less likely to experience that since I don't technically do "reviews" as much as a kind of reading journal. I'm with Sandy above and "just don't get it"...
-Jay

Melissa (Avid Reader) said...

Sandy - It's really sad, especially since most of us just blog for please, not business, in the book world.

Kailana - That's kind of how I look at it.

bkclubcare - Google alerts has been very spotty for me as well. It usually sends me stuff for a different Avid Reader who reads a lot of romance novels.

contemplatrix - I had a company contact me to ask if I would be interested in running an ad for their company. When I checked out the site I realized they basically wrote research papers for people. I was horrified!

bibliophile - I can't even imagine doing that to someone else!

Jeanne said...

A late thought--I deal with this professionally, as the director of a Writing Center, and one of the things I encourage writers to do--students and otherwise--is to use active voice and a personal point of view, wherever possible. Anything that looks "objective" is more tempting for someone who doesn't have his/her own point of view.