SWOT Analysis: Plagiarism

• Turning in another person's work as your own, and this includes a paper from free website
• Copying a paper, an excerpt, a paragraph, or a line from a source without proper acknowledgement (these can be from a print source, such as a book, journal, monograph, map, chart, or pamphlet, or from a nonprint source, such as the web and online databases)
• Taking materials from a source, supplying proper documentation, but leaving out quotation marks
• Paraphrasing materials from a source without documentation of that source
• Purchasing a paper from a research service or a commercial term paper mill
• Sharing or swapping from a local source (from student papers that were previously submitted)
• Creating invalid or faked citations

You may have to:

• Repeat the assignment
• Fail the course
• Face possible suspension

There are many reasons why it is important to cite your sources correctly.  

Most importantly, you need to give credit to the original creator of the work. Whenever you include quotes from another source or paraphrase another author's ideas, you need to also include a citation. If you don't include a citation, this is considered plagiarism.  

Professors want you to utilize research in your writing, but they also want to see that you can think for yourself. This is another reason why citations are so important. Professors need to know what ideas are yours and what ideas came from your research. When you cite a source, you also allow other people to find and read the same sources you did. This can be an effective strategy to try in your own research: find an informative source and look at its works cited or reference page to find other related sources.

To review, you need citations to...

• show the difference between research and your ideas, 
• provide a link to the research you did, 
• and most importantly, give credit to the original creator of the ideas.  

Learn more about how and why to properly cite your sources from this short video.

Acknowledge sources by giving credit. If you don't, intentionally or not, it is plagiarism.

Be organized - From the onset of a research project, establish order while gathering information. This will help to alleviate confusion and problems, especially when the time comes for the bibliography, works cited, and reference pages to be prepared. Use index cards and/or citation managers, such as Zotero, EasyBib and Endnote. Remember to:

• Note the source (citation) for each source you find. For example:  
  • Book: Author, Title, Publisher, Place and Year of publication
  • Periodical: Author, Title of Article and Periodical, Year, Vol. Issue and Pages
  • Internet: URL/Web Address, Author ,Title, and the Date site was accessed
• Quotes - Note the page numbers, enclose quoted material in quotation marks, and include a link to the source.
• Paraphrasing/Summarizing - In your notes, indicate points and ideas in your own words and, again, create a parenthetical reference to the source.

Know your citation style - The Library's Citation Style guide will help you discover how to create citations for different types of sources.

A. Plagiarism: representing in any academic activity the words or ideas of another as one’s own (whether knowingly or in ignorance) without proper acknowledgement. This principle applies to texts published in print or on-line, to manuscripts, to your own work, and to the work of other students. Acts of plagiarism include but are not limited to:

1. paraphrasing ideas, data, or writing (for instance, from web or online databases, books, periodicals, monographs, maps, charts, pamphlets, and other electronic sources), even if it constitutes only some of your written assignment, without properly acknowledging the source; or

2. using someone’s words or phrases and embedding them in your own writing without using quotation marks and citing the source; or

3. quoting material directly from a source, citing the source on the bibliography page, but failing to mark properly the author’s text or materials with quotation marks and a citation; or

4. submitting as your own part of or an entire work produced by someone else;

5. transferring and using another person’s computer file as your own; or

6. obtaining papers, tests, and other assessment material from organizations or individuals who make a practice of collecting papers for resubmission; or

7. using visual images, dance performances, musical compositions, theatrical performances, and other digital resources (PowerPoint presentations, etc.) as your own without proper acknowledgement.