Plagiarism is simply copying one's ideas and claiming them as their own. Plagiarism is not restricted to one field. It is found in various fields like cinema industry, Journalism, painting, arts etc(1). It is considered as a theft of intellectual property, violation of copyright laws(1). It is important to spread the scientific information without plagiarism failing to do results in loss of credit to the original scientist. There are many ways of doing plagiarism like claiming their name in someone else's paper, paraphrasing without giving proper citation or reference or an incorrect reference comes under plagiarism. Even, copying few sentences or paragraphs from a book or an article comes under plagiarism. There is a sharp line between paraphrasing and plagiarism. Paraphrasing is the expression of others' ideas in their own words without affecting or changing actual meaning. Paraphrasing may easily fall into the category of plagiarism if it is not done properly or used without citation. Actually, it is a skill or an art that everyone must learn or practice in order to avoid plagiarism. Difference between a plagiarized and paraphrased material can be found in the reference (2) cited below. As a hard and fast rule, not more than 5 words should be taken "as it is" from any source of information. While writing on a particular topic, it is preferable to collect information from as many sources as possible without restricting to any particular article or book and quote them in the article prepared. Summarize, analyze the information and generate new ideas by understanding it thoroughly. Run the article through plagiarism checking web sites before submitting it for publication. I wish to appeal to all the participants of this skills test to be in forefront in avoiding plagiarism. To protect and to honor the scientific/research contribution, everyone should be in a position to make their scientific contribution without plagiarism. Free from plagiarism is also essential to achieve patentability and to publish good scientific articles in reputed research journals. Most unfortunately, the current published articles are of poor quality due to lack of novelty in their research work. The authors are just adopting the same concepts of earlier published work with little modification. Nowadays Indian universities are also insisting their research scholars to submit their thesis free from plagiarism. References: 1) http://www.suite101.com/content/a-definition-for-plagiarism-a10232 accessed on 1/1/2011 2) https://www.indiana.edu/~istd/example2paraphrasing.html accessed on 1/1/2011