Why is Referencing So Important?

Plagiarism is an academic fraud by taking someone else’s work or ideas without proper quotation or paraphrases and claim that it is our own original idea. Referencing is important because we must respecting the right of ownership of someone else’s work or idea, which is considered as an intellectual labor and property.

Imagine if our work or ideas as an intangible asset then become tangible assets such as invention by Edison. Our intangible asset still abstract but then may yield discoveries into new things such as proven theory or even built into device useful to man, that we call invention. Such work or ideas is comes from creative and original thinking then put into theory or experiment. So, it will be unfair and shameful for us if we don’t respect this intellectual labor to produce intellectual property.

Therefore, referencing is relate to plagiarism because if we don’t use proper and correct system or method to cite same like we steal intellectual labor of someone else’s and put on instantly to our own work. This is plagiarism. It is crime in academic process because we are cheating and infringe the copyright at the same time.