Asking if one would send merit may be the wrong question, as merit does not indicate approval of a post, you could rather ask if the community considers that to be healthy practice.
A copy and pasted post should be evident even before the reader gets to the source link. You can use the quote tags or insert it between "..." I personally change the text to italics sometimes to show it's taken from another source as quote tags can make a thread untidy especially when used multiple times.

This is possible and any user who regularly churns out public articles without adding any personal note or comment is trying to do the bearest minimum to complete their quota.

Some users may genuinely want to share quality contents with the community, some may be promoting their websites, so it is not always a merit grab attempt. However, such pure articles should be posted in the Press board (if it is notbale enough), which doesn't get much attention or merits these days. Posting outside here may be an attempt to make it count to their weekly quota as some managers do not accept posts made there or the user could be trying to get more attention and a chance of getting merited.

I definitely think this; if done right, with effort, external articles can be used to create thought provoking discussions.