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Plagiarism: Home

Introduction

This guide is here to help in learning to recognize and avoid plagiarism. Often professors will refer to Academic Dishonesty instead of Plagiarism; for all practical purposes they are the same. Browse through this guide to see definitions of academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and other important terms as well as examples of different types of plagiarism and how to avoid them. 

Definitions

Academic dishonesty refers to any act that is intended to produce an academic assessment that is not commensurate with an individual’s performance, or any act that is intended to unfairly assist or hinder an individual’s academic efforts. 

Such acts include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • When one person allows their work to be assessed (graded) as someone else’s work (ex: taking a test for a classmate).
  • When one person takes credit for work they haven’t done
  • Unauthorized possession of resources (ex: reserved library material).
  • Misrepresentation of an academic record (e.g., changing grades).
  • Denial of access to resources (e.g. computer software) intended to be available to others.

Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to:

  • Use by paraphrase or direct quotation of the published or unpublished work of another person without fully and properly crediting the author with footnotes, citations or bibliographical reference.
  • Unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another person or agency engaged in the selling of term papers or other academic materials.
  • Unacknowledged use of original work/material that has been produced through collaboration with others without release in writing from collaborators.

Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it slightly. 

Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author.