From adolescence up until young adulthood, most lucky people are able to receive education in abundance through numerous institutions and within these institutions are able to strive for a multitude of varying scholarly pursuits. But with these pursuits of engaging one's self in the infrastructure of academia, requires honesty and responsibility. Students, as well as faculty, must adhere to this natural scholarly code of conduct which holds that one's own academic work should be the product of the individual's own time spent constructing and fermenting said work. Intellectual additions from outside material is certainly allowed and encouraged, though these contributions must be wholly accredited to those whom they come from, lest it be deemed fraudulent. This process is known as academic integrity and it is a vital and necessary part of the overall system of academia. Though throughout the history of scholarship, plagiarism has appeared as it's an inevitable human error. However, it appears as though in recent years in particular within the United States, a lack of academic integrity and a rise in blatant plagiarism among students has risen to the fore front of education and is now hazing over the integrity that was once respected and held dear (library.Illinois.edu).

The act of using someone else's ideas, words, or both and unclearly acknowledging that source of the information is the definition of plagiarism. Plagiarism is a difficult subject as it is not always black and white. It can be, however, say, if for example a person purchases essays or sections from an online source and uses those words completely as his or her own. But plagiarism does not always signify guilt as there is acceptable plagiarism which lye in the form of unintentional lack of complete and full citing. This occurs very frequently as people tend to paraphrase or summarize other's works into their own words while in the process not realizing that these new words still skew too closely to the original text and thus are deemed as plagiarized (library.Illinois.edu). The origin of the word plagiarism derives from the early 17th century Latin word plagiarius, meaning 'kidnapper' (oxforddictionaries.com)
However, the history of the concept of plagiarism or academic dishonesty can be rooted all the way back to when man could first compile words into an assimilated fashion of meaning. For example, most religious text date back to ancient times and most were without authors and were freely copied and incorporated within future texts. However, during the Renaissance, individuality among scholarship shifted and thus personal achievement became much more highly valued in society. So naturally during this time period accusations of plagiarism began to arise in nearly all creative fields. In 1709, the premiere English copyright law was passed and so set forth the unscrupulous effort to thwart potential plagiarism before it even begins (hygeiajournal.com). Thus with continuing newfound laws on copyright infringement and piracy, a new standard was set in place to ensure that all original authors are accredited when it rightfully calls for such. This new forming of accreditation allowed for new possibilities in creating textual adherence for varying cultures. One such example would be The Diario of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage To America 1492-1493. On the front cover of the diary, it acknowledges first Christopher Columbus in the title, then states that it was abstracted by Fray Bartolome De Las Casas and then that it was "transcribed and translated into English, with notes and a concordance of the Spanish," by Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley, Jr. Accreditation is used also throughout in the ensuing pages of the diary but just from the front cover alone it is seen how acknowledgement is vastly important in identifying specific contributors as well as how it has become essential in bringing historical text