Library Research Skills
What Is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined as "the act of passing off as one's own the ideas or writings of another." three simple conventions are presented for when you must provide a reference:
- If you use someone else's ideas, you should cite the source.
- If the way in which you are using the source is unclear, make it clear.
- If you received specific help from someone in writing the paper, acknowledge it.
Adapted and modified (5th December 2005) from http://www.georgetown.edu/honor/plagiarism.html#top
“Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to the use by paraphrase or direct quotation, the published or unpublished work of another person without full and clear acknowledgement; unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another person or agency engaging in selling or otherwise providing term papers or other academic materials.”
Intentional or Accidental At it is very difficult for teachers and administrators to distinguish between deliberate and accidental plagiarism, one way to avoid plagiarism is to make sure you give credit where it is due. This may be credit for something somebody said, wrote, emailed, drew, or implied by their work or research.
Choosing When to Give Credit
You need to give credit and document your source when:
- When you are using or referring to somebody else’s words or ideas from a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium.
- When you use information gained through interviewing another person.
- When you copy the exact words or a "unique phrase" from somewhere
- When you use ideas that others have given you in conversations or over email.
- When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts or pictures from another source.
You do not need to document your source when:
- When you are writing your own experiences, your own observations, your own insights, your own thoughts and drawing your own conclusions about a particular subject.
- When you are writing up results from your own research or experiments.
- When you are compiling generally accepted facts on a given subject.
- When you are using "common knowledge" — folklore, common sense observations, shared information within your field of study or cultural group
Actions you can take to avoid plagiarism when:
researching, note-taking, and interviewing.
- Mark everything that is someone else’s words with a big Q (for quote) or with big quotation marks.
- Indicate in your notes which ideas are taken from sources (S), whether primary (ps) or secondary (ss) and which are your own reflections or insights (ME).
- Record all of the relevant documentation information in your notes.
- Do a thorough check with your notes (or photocopies of sources) to make sure that anything taken from your notes is acknowledged in some combination of the ways listed below:
- In-text citation
- Footnotes
- Bibliography
- Quotation marks
- Indirect quotations
Actions you can take to avoid plagiarism when:
quoting directly.
- Keep the person’s name near the quote in your notes, and in your paper.
- Mention the person’s name either at the beginning of the quote, in the middle, or at the end.
- Put quotation marks around the text that you are quoting.
- Indicate added phrases in brackets ([ ]) and omitted text with ellipses (. . .)
TIP!
Select those direct quotes that make the most impact in your paper - too many direct quotes may lessen your credibility and interfere with your writing style.
Actions you can take to avoid plagiarism when:
quoting indirectly.
- Keep the person’s name near the text in your notes, and in your paper.
- Rewrite the key ideas using different words and sentence structures than the original text.
- Mention the person’s name either at the beginning of the information, or in the middle, or at that end.
- Double check to make sure that your words and sentence structures are different than the original text.
Adapted and Modified (5th December 2005) from a tutorial. This page is located at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/print/research/r_plagiar.html Copyright ©1995-2004 by OWL at Purdue University and Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Use of this site, including printing and distributing our handouts, constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use, available at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/lab/fairuse.html
Deciding if Something is "Common Knowledge"
Material is probably common knowledge if . . .
- You find the same information undocumented in at least five other sources
- You think it is information that your readers will already know
- You think a person could easily find the information with general reference sources
- Evaluation Checklist (Word Document, 132 kbs)
WWW Evaluation Checklist
AUTHOR
1. Who is the author of the document?
2. Is the author the original creator of the information?
Yes No Can't tell
3. Does he or she list his or her occupation, years of experience, position, or education? If so, list here:
4. With this information or lack of it, do you feel this person is qualified to write on the topic?
Yes No If yes, why?
LOCAL INSTITUTION OR HOME PAGE
5. What institution (company, government, university, etc.) or Internet provider supports this information?
6. If it is a commercial Internet provider, does the author appear to have any affiliation with a larger institution? q Yes q No
7. If it is an institution, is it a national one? q Yes q No
8. Does the institution appear to filter the information appearing under its name?
q Yes q No
9. Does the author's affiliation with this particular institution appear to bias the information?
Yes No
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
10. When was the information created or last updated?
11. What appears to be the purpose for this information? (explain)
Inform Explain Persuade
CONCLUSION
12. Given all the information you determined from above, is this document appropriate for your topic? Yes No
If yes, explain why, including any reservations you might have.
The University of South Queensland, Australia, has good up-to-date explanation on Plagiarism with examples and is available at http://www.usq.edu.au/plagiarism/infostud/plagexpla.htm This site gives tips for both Students and Academic Staff on how to avoid and detect Plagiarism.
