An interesting point in this essay:
Plagiarism...is normally understood as «[p]resenting work or ideas from
another source as your own, with or without consent of the original author,
by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement». This
Oxford University definition goes hand in hand with definitions stated in
various dictionaries that systematically define plagiarism as the
misappropriation of «work and ideas» and not as mere replication of words.
This is reasonable, since «work and ideas» should pertain to the intellectual
content and not to the words used to convey that content. It is possible to
steal someone’s research work and ideas, scientific discoveries or scholarly
contributions and present them as one’s own without repeating the same
words, without committing any copyright infringement and without being
caught by modern computer-based tools that check the originality of
research publications.
Of course, what the author calls "copyright infringement" can also be plagiarism.
(Thanks to Nick Zangwill for the pointer.)
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