Plagiarism

Watch out for plagiarism. It's a lot easier than you might think, and you don't even have to be conscious you're doing it.

Plagiarism is more than just stealing words; it can also involve lifting ideas, forgetting to give credit, or just bad proofreading. For example, it's easy to read something, forget you read it, and then suddenly come up with some really great ideas...

Generally, writers agree that you should always do the following (according to your style manual, of course):

• Identify direct quotations with the appropriate punctuation.
• Cite both quotations and paraphrases religiously.
• Cite more than just one or two sources, depending on the context.
• Give a complete citation, so someone else can find your source.

Avoiding Plagiarism: Examples, Right and Wrong

These academic Web sites discuss plagiarism from a technical standpoint:

Recognizing and Avoiding Plagiarism (Indiana University)

Indiana University's Writing Tutorial Services provides some examples of plagiarism and how to avoid it. It emphasizes proper paraphrasing and how to avoid various pitfalls. Also see their Writing Resources page for general information about paper-writing.

Avoiding Plagiarism (Hamilton University)

This page has a couple of examples where you can judge for yourself : Plagiarism or Not Plagiarism? The author is sure to cite all her references...

Plagiarism (Northwestern University)

A comprehensive list of appropriate citations of various kinds of sources, including lecture notes, charts and graphs, authors' examples, and "debatable facts." This page also provides annotated examples of incorrect uses of sources.

Plagiarism (Princeton University)

This electronic handout provides still more examples of good and bad uses of sources. There are also links to related handouts, such as how to document sources, when to document sources, and how to write a research paper.

Plagiarism and the Internet

While the Internet has been a boon to legitimate researchers, it's also been like Christmas to Easy electronic access to sources has made it relatively easy to steal ideas, as well as entire research papers. However, it's also much easier to catch these cheaters. Here are some views on the situation. Remember, professors know about cheating, too. Here are some sites dealing with catching on-line plagiarists.

Student Plagiarism in an Online World (American Society for Engineering Education)

"Here are some tools to help you expose cybercheaters." This site is a very comprehensive list of ways that students cheat, clues that they're cheating, and online tools to catch them.

Battling Plagiarism Through the Internet (ABPnews.com)

An overview of some of the more common anti-plagiarism web sites. It emphasizes that much online plagiarism is probably unintentional and the result of poor writing skills.

The Cheating Game

US News weighs in with this feature on the online cheating controversy. Also see their Great Term-Paper Caper, where they actually buy a paper online and check it for quality.

The Web's Plagiarism Police (Salon.com)

This is the story of just how overzealous some of these plagiarism checkers can be.

Online Plagiarism Catchers

Plagiarism.org

One of the online services for detecting plagiarism. It analyzes word choice and sentence structure to determine originality of writing.

Plagiarism.com

Another online service; this one removes every fifth word of the paper and asks the author to replace those words. It claims to be wildly successful. You can test it yourself online (but use a recent paper, so you can remember what you were talking about).

And Finally, Another Viewpoint:

Historically, western Europeans have used intellectual property to protect financial as well as scholarly investments. Now that the Internet is redefining the intellectual community, is it really so necessary to emphasize the importance of individual authors? At least one person doesn't think so: The Death and Rebirth of Plagiarism.

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This page created by Christopher Ryland 25 August 2000. Last updated 28 July 2002.