If you include an exact or direct quote, use quotation marks to indicate the writing isn t your own.

Mosaic Plagiarism: Everything You Need to Know Regarding Mosaic Plagiarism

You come across different ways people commit plagiarism in writing. Learning about them will help one identify the plagiarism type and avoid having it when writing. Mosaic plagiarism, which is also called incremental plagiarism or patchwork plagiarism, is a common type of plagiarism found in academic papers. The usual producer of it is, for the most part, students.

What is Mosaic Plagiarism?

By a general mosaic plagiarism definition, “mosaic plagiarism occurs when a student borrows exact words from a source without using quotations,” or, to be precise, without appropriately citing the source.

Thus, when a student uses somebody else’s work in his or her piece of writing, without paraphrasing or giving quotation marks or citations appropriately, he or she causes plagiarism, generally mosaic plagiarism.

The term patchwork plagiarism or ‘patch writing’ applies to mosaic plagiarism, which occurs when copying patches of content from various sources and creating a text by putting them together without changing anything. Sometimes, it includes minimal changes or rephrasing of sentences while retaining most of the words and content structure used in the original content.

While writing content, ‘borrowing’ or copying may be unavoidable. In such a case, using quotation marks plays an essential role if the author wants to avoid mosaic plagiarism.

Mosaic plagiarism is also called incremental plagiarism, wherein you use passages, excerpts, or quotes without citation. This plagiarism scenario materializes when the entire work is original content, but the quotations and other data are used without appropriately citing the source.

Thus, it indicates that a writer has not given appropriate credit for the source from where he or she borrowed the content. If a student borrows phrases from other sources without using quotations, plagiarism occurs. It is academically dishonest and may lead to serious consequences.

It may be a case of accidental plagiarism, but whether it is intentional or not, plagiarism is academically dishonest and punishable. This academically dishonest scenario occurs when a student ‘borrows’ phrases from a source and puts them into his or her work, either without citing the source or paraphrasing the content in a clumsy manner.

What Are the Primary Forms of Mosaic Plagiarism?

Students commit mosaic plagiarism when they copy a text, phrases, or paragraphs from a single source. In this case, they may copy texts or phrases from one source and use the ideas of the original work as their own without crediting the original author or seeking the author’s permission.

This type of mosaic plagiarism is a bit complicated as it involves copying from several written sources. Some students use texts derived from different sources and combine them to give a logical flow. Here, they think about the phrases copied and connect them cohesively but do not cite the sources.

Here words and phrases from several sources are intertwined to form a single piece of written work. While doing it, they need slight rephrasing, but keep most words and structure the same. The plagiarism looks insidious here, but some plagiarism checkers like Copyleaks can easily detect it.

The Plausible Consequences of Mosaic Plagiarism

This type of plagiarism causes serious offense to the original author. The student or person involved is accused of being dishonest and may face adverse consequences of plagiarism.

Like other forms of plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism may carry punishments and penalties. It may lead to a reduction in grades or may even end up in the student’s suspension from the educational institution.

For bloggers, the punishment for committing plagiarism is low search engine rankings, and for the people who commit plagiarism, a tampered reputation is the ultimate repercussion. An author can also pursue the matter in court, which may lead to penalties or fines to the offender.