Many students understand the importance of academic integrity, but need more clarification about plagiarism. Plagiarism occurs when a student presents another person’s ideas—intentionally or unintentionally—as their own. Students are expected to always credit sources of ideas that are used in completing assignments. Citing the original source used for an idea is critical. Professors may tell students which style of citations to utilize, or students may be expected to utilize a style of their choice; the most common styles used include:
Citations must be used for quotations when the text is identical to the original text, AND when paraphrasing or summarizing (putting someone else’s idea into your own words).
The following example from the Online Writing Lab demonstrates when citations must be used and an instance of plagiarism:
- The original passage: "Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes." Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): 46-47.
- A legitimate paraphrase: In research papers students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).
- An acceptable summary: Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).
- A plagiarized version: Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes.
Students may find the Online Writing Lab (OWL) Segment on Avoiding Plagiarism helpful.