Plagiarism

Plagiarism is an act of fraud. It means that someone is using a persons’ intellectual work without informing that the content (e.g., text, images) belongs to another person. 

There are two main types of plagiarism: deliberate/intentional and unintentional.

Deliberate/Intentional:

• Copying from another source without citing.
• Buying, stealing, or borrowing a paper.
• Copying a friend’s work.
• Cutting and pasting blocks of text from electronic sources without proper citing.

Unintentional:

• Careless paraphrasing.
• Quoting excessively.
• Poor documentation.
• Using source too closely when paraphrasing.
• Failure to use your own “voice.”

Plagiarizing has consequences:

• Depends on set policies and guidelines.
• Depends on severity of act.
• Reprimanding and punishment.
• Failing an assignment/course.
• Suspension.
• Any other, depending on act of plagiarism.

If you respect the values of academic integrity (accuracy, honesty, justice, responsibility, respect), you will not fall into plagiarism.

The following are resources to understand more about plagiarism:

Articles

• Calonia, J. (n.d.). How to avoid plagiarism? 
• Curtis, G. J. and Vardanega, L. (2016). Is plagiarism changing over time? A ten-year time-lag study with three points of measurement. Higher Education Research & Development, 35, 6, pp. 1167-1179.
• Deepak Juyal, D., Thawani, V., and Thaledi, S. (2015). Rise of academic plagiarism in India: reasons, solutions, and resolution. Lung India: official organ of Indian Chest Society, 32, 5, 542–543.  
• p.org (2017). What is plagiarism? 
• p.org (2017). Preventing plagiarism when writing. 

Books

• DeSena, L. H. (n.d.). Preventing plagiarism: tips and techniques. Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English. 
• Hill, D. J. (2015). A beginner’s guide to plagiarism: what is plagiarism and how can you avoid it? New Zealand: National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence. 
• Leeds Metropolitan University (2003). How to avoid plagiarism?
  
• University of Melbourne (n.d.). Using sources and avoiding plagiarism. 

 Conference Papers

• Pandey, S., Sharma, H. R. and Rawa, A. (2016). A review paper on awareness statistics on plagiarism among research scholars. IEEE International Conference on Recent Trends in Electronics, Information & Communication Technology (RTEICT), Bangalore, pp. 24-26.

 Videos

• Badenhorst, C. (2018). Avoiding Plagiarism: Graduate thesis/research writing.
• CFLearnFree.org (2018). Avoiding plagiarism.
• Editage Insights (2013). Tips to avoid accidental plagiarism.
  
• University of Alberta (2013). Cheating.
• York St. John University (2013). Understanding plagiarism.
  

Websites

• IEEE. Introduction to the Guidelines for handling plagiarism complaints. 
• IIT Gandhinagar. Library (2016). What is plagiarism? & how to avoid it. 
• Northwestern University. How to avoid plagiarism. 
• Purdue University. Is it plagiarism yet? 
• The University of Edinburgh (2017). Plagiarism: what is plagiarism and how to avoid it.  
• University of Alberta (2020). Plagiarism. 
• University of North Carolina Wilmington (2019). Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It. 
• University of Oxford (2020). Plagiarism. 
• University of Oxford (2020). Unintentional plagiarism. 
• University of Reading. Avoid accidental plagiarism.