Plagiarism: a global phenomenon

Academic writing is specially a challenging task for ESL/EFL students as it entails an assortment of cognitive and linguistic processes which is beyond their capability. Consequently, to fulfill the writing requirement of academia, an unexperienced writer very often ventures to make use of other peoples’ words and ideas without citing the source-a practice commonly known as “plagiarism”. Scholars have traced various kinds of plagiarism in student academic writing. However, there exists an underlying contradiction among the scholars regarding the reasons for plagiarism in academic writing committed by students. One segment of researchers believes students as exclusively liable for committing plagiarism. On the Contrary, the researchers with opposite views, underscore the concern of responsibility of educational institutions and academics. This article aims to collate seminal works on plagiarism which concentrate on the aspects- reasons, and types of plagiarism, and the role of education institutions to minimize plagiarism.