This document discusses plagiarism, including defining it, when it occurs, what causes it, how to avoid it, and how it is detected. Plagiarism is defined as presenting another's work as one's own without proper citation or acknowledgement. It occurs when passages, words, or ideas are used without attribution. To avoid plagiarism, all intellectual property and ideas obtained from sources must be properly cited. Plagiarism can be detected through services that check for matching text or inconsistencies in writing style within a paper.
2. What is plagiarism?
When does plagiarism occur?
What causes plagiarism?
What needs to be cited?
When does something need to be cited?
How is plagiarism detected?
How is it prevented?
Recognizing Plagiarism:
This module answers the following questions:
Understanding and Avoiding
Plagiarism
3. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism is intentionally or unintentionally giving the
impression that words or ideas from another source are your
own (Clines & Cobb, 2006,p.21).
Plagiarism is the act of passing off anothers words and
ideas as your own (Winkler & McCuen, 2003,p.93).
What is plagiarism?
Recognizing Plagiarism:
4. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
Plagiarism means the unacknowledged use of words, ideas or
creations of another and includes situations where the student
reuses without acknowledgement their own previously written text,
ideas or creations when writing any new work.
As defined in the UWI Regulations on Plagiarism
for Graduate Students:
Recognizing Plagiarism:
The University recognizes two levels of plagiarism:
Level 1: where small quantities of the work are affected and/or the
breaches are minor, such as poor paraphrasing or
incorrect or missing citations.
Level 2: where large quantities of the work are affected and/or the
breaches are serious, such as when attribution is
insufficient to indicate that the borrowed material is not the
work of the student.
5. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
What is plagiarism?
A form of academic dishonesty
The act of not acknowledging the author or source of
information, ideas, words or data
The act of claiming anothers work as ones own
The act of using anothers words or ideas without
proper citation
The act of having a third party write ones paper
The act of reusing ones own material without
acknowledgement
Recognizing Plagiarism:
6. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
When does plagiarism occur?
Plagiarism occurs when:
Entire passages are incorporated into papers without
proper citation
Word-for-word use of content is not enclosed in
quotation marks
Passages are paraphrased or summarized without
proper citation
Sources are misrepresented
Personal opinions are attributed to a published source
Recognizing Plagiarism:
7. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
What causes plagiarism?
Assuming that information is common knowledge
Assuming that rewording a passage makes it your
own
Forgetting to record source citations when taking
notes from several articles
Using cut and paste techniques when note-taking
Interjecting your opinions or reactions into a summary
of a source
Changing the tone of a source to benefit your
message
Recognizing Plagiarism:
8. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
What needs to be cited?
All intellectual property
Common knowledge (if quoted, paraphrased or
summarized from a published source)
Copyrighted material
Public domain material
Facts obtained from published sources
Recognizing Plagiarism:
9. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
When does something need to be cited?
If you are using someone elses:
Original words
Ideas which you summarize or paraphrase
Interesting or unique word, term or phrase
Graphic, map, chart, figure, table or photograph
Advertisement or cartoon
Ideas from a lecture or speech
Ideas from an interview or conversation
Experiment or results from an experiment
Ideas from videos, films, or television programs
Recognizing Plagiarism:
10. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
Common Sense:
It is not the length of the writing that determines whether
you give credit to a source; its whether or not you use its
phrasing or ideas in your research paper (Winkler &
McCuen, 2003, p.94).
Recognizing Plagiarism:
11. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
How is plagiarism detected?
Electronically
Services like turnitin.com
Manually
Incongruence in writing styles with other course
activities or previous papers
Changes in voice or tone in written passages
Currency of citation dates
Obsolescence of hyperlinks
Recognizing Plagiarism:
12. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
How is plagiarism prevented?
Disciplinary consequences for violations
Assignment construction
Creating new assignments every term
Requiring submission of source documents with
assignments
Student education
Tutorials and information provided
Practice in recognition
Development of better writing and note-taking
skills
Recognizing Plagiarism:
13. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
Source Materials
Sources on Plagiarism:
Aaron, J.E. (2004). The little, brown compact handbook (5th ed.). New York:
Pearson-Longman.
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication manual of the American
Psychological Association (5th
ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Clines, R.H., & Cobb, E.R. (2006). Research writing simplified: A documentation
guide (5th ed.). New York: Pearson-Longman.
Winkler, A.C., & McCuen, J.R. (2003). Writing the research paper: A handbook
(6th ed.). Boston, MA: Thomson/Heinle.