Preventing Plagiarism

• Many students who face discipline for plagiarism claim they did not know that their research methods constituted plagiarism.
• Ignorance is not a valid excuse; all students must learn proper techniques for conducting research, incorporating it into their writing, and quoting, citing, and documenting properly.

Categories & Definitions:

1. fraud: Turning in someone else's writing as your own; inventing statistics or sources that do not exist; falsifying evidence.
    
2. plagiarism: Intentionally or unintentionally using someone else's ideas or writing in part or whole in your own paper without proper attribution.
    
3. "accidental" plagiarism: When a writer attempts or intends to write in his/her own words but -- out of ignorance, sloppiness, or carelessness -- fails to distinguish quote from paraphrase or fails to cite and document properly. Legally, there is no distinction between intentional and unintentional plagiarism -- both carry legal or financial penalties and can ruin a writer's reputation.
    
4. sloppy citation and poor integration of sources: This is not plagiarism (and usually entails no punishment other than a poor grade), but it demonstrates ignorance of the rules of citation, and such ignorance can lead to "accidental" plagiarism later.

Top 3 most common causes of plagiarism:

1. Poor time management: Many students who deliberately plagiarize do so because they have waited till the last minute to write the paper and panic when they realize they cannot finish it in time. It's better to beg for an extension, take an incomplete, or accept a lower grade than to face the consequences of plagiarism.
    
2. Ignorance of the rules regarding paraphrasing.
    
3. Sloppy note-taking during the research process: it is very easy to mistake hand-written or copied-and-pasted segments of someone else's writing as your own.

Most common plagiarism problems, mistakes, and misconceptions:

1. "I didn't know I had to cite that, too!"
   Some students think they only need to cite direct quotes and statistics. While this is true, writers also need to cite unique ideas and unique phrasing belonging to someone else. Summaries and paraphrases of books, essays, and other sources of information also need to be fully cited.
    
2. "But I included a bibliography . . ."
   A bibliography is not enough! Careful documentation of your sources at the level of the sentence is also extremely important because it is at the level of the sentence that you distinguish your ideas and words from someone else's.
    
3. Copy-cat paraphrasing
   This is when a student attempts to summarize or paraphrase an idea or some research made by someone else, but adheres too closely to the other writer's phrasing and sentence structure. Even if there is a footnote or citation attached to the copy-cat sentence, it is still plagiarism if another writer's words are not enclosed in quotation marks.
    
4. "I copied and pasted from several different websites, and after I wrote the paper I forgot which words were mine and which were from other people, so I didn't know where to put the quotation marks. Then I forgot to write down the URLs and I couldn't find any of the websites again."
   This is an all-too-common situation of sloppy research and note-taking methods with serious consequences.
    
5. But it's just a draft!"
   Even a draft is supposed to be all your own writing and thinking or be properly cited in at least a preliminary form. A plagiarized draft will earn you the same severity of punishment as a plagiarized final paper. If you submit a draft to your professor or TA, always include a preliminary but complete bibliography and clear indication of which words and ideas belong to you and which belong to other people.