Plagiarism is a violation of ethics such as honesty and integrity and it can have far-reaching consequences for professional writers. Whether it’s a student, a researcher, a journalist, or a content writer, committing plagiarism can stain their professional reputation.
You may be wondering if plagiarism is such a serious affair, then why do people do it? The answer is different for everyone involved. For example, students may plagiarize because they have a poor understanding of plagiarism.
However, a researcher or journalist may plagiarize due to deliberate malicious intent and steal someone’s work. Or just like many others, they may commit plagiarism by accident.
However, all types of plagiarism are treated the same and reflect badly upon a person’s professional reputation. In this article, we will check out how the effect of plagiarism on reputation can result in other problems.
Effects of Plagiarism on Reputation
1. Loss of Reputation
Of course, this is the most straightforward impact of plagiarism. When a person is caught for committing plagiarism then their reputation takes a massive hit. People who learn of their dishonesty will not be willing to associate with them.
The company that hired them may have to let them go (i.e., fire them). Other companies in the same niche may learn about their plagiarism and refuse to grant them job offers or opportunities to further their career.
This means that effectively, the plagiarist’s career is over. A researcher won’t be able to secure research funding and publishers will not accept their work.
A journalist will be reviled for lying and let go by their network. Students may be expelled from their institute and blacklisted from admission into other institutes.
All of that will happen because of a poor reputation.
2. Credibility will Tank
If a person is caught plagiarizing then their credibility will be damaged. Credibility is directly related to reputation. A good reputation implies that the person is credible and a bad one shows that the person is not trustworthy.
The loss of credibility is really hard to bear in a professional setting. Professional writers are a part of a team. They have colleagues, superiors, and juniors with whom they work to create their projects.
If a writer in such a professional environment is a known plagiarist, their co-workers will not be able to trust them with anything. They will always feel as if the writer will try to cop out or do something underhanded instead of putting in an honest effort.
This makes it incredibly hard for a writer to advance their career, or make healthy workplace relationships.
3. Poor Public Perception
If a negative reputation gets out to the public then it can have long-lasting consequences. Nowadays news travels fast due to the internet. And whatever gets on the internet stays on it for a long time.
Lets a take a look at some examples.
A journalist that is known to be a plagiarist by the public will be vilified on internet forums. They may face harassment and be heckled online. Their audience will lose trust in them and that will decrease the number of people watching their content for news.
A researcher will be harassed online and people will start nitpicking on their older works as well. Even their legitimate works will be scrutinized and people will not trust their research. They may even leverage public opinion to strong-arm publishers into blacklisting the researcher and removing their research from their journals.
If a professional blogger is known to be a plagiarist, the public will leave mean comments on their platform and drag their ratings into the mud.
And the worst thing about all of this is that people won’t forget. Even if the writer makes amends and changes their ways, some people will always hold their one act of plagiarism against them.
How Can Professionals Safeguard Their Reputation?
Hits to reputation are difficult to shake off, so what can writers do? The best thing to do is to avoid taking the hits altogether. That means before publishing anything a writer should make sure that their content is plagiarism free.
There is an easy solution to solve that issue. A professional writer can utilize a plagiarism checker to check their write-up for duplication issues. All it takes is to find a reliable plagiarism checker.
A good plagiarism detector can detect and compare the content against a ton of online sources to see if there is any matching content. The best tools available even pinpoint the exact text that is similar and list the source that it is taken from.
Using this functionality, professional writers can edit their works (if there is some plagiarism) and ensure that they do not get a bad reputation.
Conclusion
The effects of plagiarism on professional reputation are very damaging. Professional writers can destroy their careers and lose their jobs because of a bad reputation. A bad reputation follows a person around for a very long time. That means that they may suffer from the bad after-effects for that length of time.
To avoid this outcome, using a plagiarism checker to detect duplicate content and remove it is the best way. This saves professionals from getting their reputation into trouble and avoids all of the negative after-effects.