Understanding Plagiarism and Avoiding It At All Costs

Understanding Plagiarism and Avoiding It At All Costs

By Janean L. Watkins, Editor in Chief

In the midst of the academic semester, students find themselves study-weary and in need of a respite from the pressures. One way to find solace and simultaneously destroy a student's hard work is to resort to plagiarism.

"Not me, I'm not stupid enough to plagiarize", one might say. But are you aware just how easy it could be to accidentallyplagiarize in your paper on mid-17^th century religious toleration, or even in your next set of solutions to plotting those coordinates for equations?

According to NEIU's website on plagiarism, "Strictly speaking, it's difficult to avoid.  An incomplete citation, a minor paraphrased idea that isn't sourced, even a typographic error can constitute plagiarism.  These minor oversights are generally forgiven, especially at the early college level. Flagrant plagiarism is easy to commit, but isn't likely to occur by accident." So whether it's a simple mistake, or blatant "kidnapping" of someone's work – these things do happen.

Dartmouth College even goes as far as to say that it's a form of plagiarism to reuse your own paper on the sociology of deviance in your criminal justice class if you haven't received the okay from your professor. In other words – not even your own written work should be reused without citation and/or approval from the professor who will review the assignment.

Dartmouth says that plagiarism is, "intellectual theft. It occurs when you use the words or ideas of others without acknowledging that you have done so…regardless of your intent." Therefore, even well-meaning students find themselves violating plagiarism policies in an effort to show that they've studied widely.

A few tips offered by Dartmouth College to avoid plagiarism are as follows:

·       Specifically mark the quoted material and immediately cite the source.

·       Place the quoted text in quotation marks or format as a block quotation (It expressly notes that bibliography citations alone DO NOT count as proper in text citations. That immediate in textcitation must be made)

·       Singular phrases or words must be noted by quotation marks and source citation

·       Altering an idea of another source does not mean that a writer can avoid quotations

·       "Usage of images, maps, charts, tables, data sets, musical compositions, movies, new-media compositions, computer source code, song lyrics and the like must have source citations."

·       Of you find a solution to a problem on a website, and you use the solution, you have to cite the source – this is even if you teach yourself how to arrive at the same solution to said problem