Plagiarism

i) What is Plagiarism? 

Any written assignment (essays, project, take-home exams, etc) submitted by a student must not be deceptive regarding the abilities, knowledge, or amount of work contributed by the student. There are many ways that this rule can be violated. Among them are:

Paraphrases: The student paraphrases a closely reasoned argument of an author without acknowledging that he or she has done so. (Clearly, all our knowledge is derived from somewhere, but detailed arguments from clearly identifiable sources must be acknowledged.)

Outright plagiarism: Large sections of the paper are simply copied from other sources, and are not acknowledged as quotations.

Other sources: often include essays written by other students or sold by unscrupulous organizations. Quoting from such papers is perfectly legitimate if quotation marks are used and the source is cited.

Works by others: Taking credit deliberately or not deliberately for works produced by another without giving proper acknowledgement. Works includes photographs, charts, graphs, drawings, statistics, video-clips, audio-clips, verbal exchanges such as interviews or lectures, performances on television and texts printed on the web.

The student submits the same essay to two or more courses.

ii) How can I avoid Plagiarism?

Insert quotation marks around ‘copy and paste’ clause, phrase, sentence, paragraph and cite the original source.

Paraphrase clause, phrase, sentence or paragraph in your own words and cite your source

Adhere to the APA (American Psychological Association) stylistic format, whichever applicable, when citing a source and when writing out the bibliography or reference page

Attempt to write independently without being overly dependent of information from another’s original works

Educate yourself on what may be considered as common knowledge (no copyright necessary), public domain (copyright has expired or not protected under copyright law), or copyright (legally protected).