Research Tips: Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of taking another person's words and/or ideas and passing them off as your own. This may be done intentionally or accidentally by not properly citing information you found in the sources for your research.

Types of Plagiarism

1. Copying, quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing source material without citing (saying who and where it came from) it.
2. Submitting a paper you wrote for a different class. (Yes, you can plagiarize yourself!)
3. Submitting someone else's paper as your paper.

How to Avoid Plagiarizing

1. Give credit for all thoughts, ideas, perspectives, etc. that came from someone else. 
2. Use quotation marks around any spoken words or text taken word-for-word from any source and also cite it.
3. Cite all data, statistics, facts (except generally known and accepted facts).

In a nutshell, if you did not come up with the information, then you must give credit to the person(s) who did.

If you would like assistance in knowing when and how to cite information, please get in touch with us.