Academic Honesty -- Plagiarism Defining

Academic Honesty -- Plagiarism

Defining Plagiarism

In general, plagiarism refers to the presentation of the intellectual ideas, opinions, or analyses of others as the author's own ideas (Harvey, 2003). More specifically, plagiarism is the use of those ideas without properly referencing and giving credit to their original source. In professional situations, plagiarism may involve improper use of ideas in published work for hire; in academic situations, plagiarism typically involves the use of reference material by students in ways that does not include any acknowledgment of their original source (Harvey, 2003).

Student Motivation for Plagiarism

The motivations of students to commit plagiarism are usually fairly straightforward: they may believe that the ideas of others are superior to their own or they may be too lazy to formulate or organize their own original ideas. It is likely that some of the other most common reasons that students plagiarize is that they lack confidence in their own writing abilities and they procrastinate over their assignments leaving themselves too little time to complete assignments relying completely on their own work. Finally, students also often plagiarize unintentionally because they do not genuinely do not realize when citation is required and when it is not (Harvey, 2003).

Intentional vs. Unintentional Plagiarism

Intentional plagiarism is simply the deliberate misrepresentation of other's ideas as one's own. Unintentional plagiarism typically results either from the lack of realization that the information at issue is not common knowledge or from the erroneous belief that it is acceptable to paraphrase or reword other's ideas without crediting the original source as long as the actual wording is substantially different (iParadigm, 2010).

Examples of Proper and Improper Citation

Examples of improper citation include "forgotten footnotes," deliberately providing inaccurate information to original sources, referencing verbatim quotes without acknowledging that they are actually verbatim quotes, excessive reliance on sourced material in lieu of any original analyses, and making more extensive use of sources that are properly acknowledged but only in more limited context than those sources are represented in the work (iParadigm, 2010)

Forgotten Footnotes and Deliberately Incomplete or Inaccurate Information

This form of plagiarism typically consists of the inclusion of the name of the author of the sourced material but without sufficient information about the actual location of that material (iParadigm, 2010). A common example of purposely providing incomplete or inaccurate information would be changing the spelling within Internet urls so that they do not actually lead back to the source.

Citing Quotes without Acknowledging them as Quotes

This form of plagiarism consists of citing the material as the ideas of another but neglecting to indicate that the cited material is actually quoted verbatim (iParadigm, 2010). A perfect example would be the following citation of the iParadigm material on this topic:

The writer properly cites a source, but neglects to put in quotation marks text that has been copied word-for-word, or close to it. Although attributing the basic ideas to the source, the writer is falsely claiming original presentation and interpretation of the information (iParadigm, 2010).

Unacknowledged Reliance and Over-reliance on Sourced Material

Unacknowledged reliance on sourced material would be citing only the first paragraph of this section, "Examples of Proper and Improper Citation" as being derived from iParadigm without any subsequent citation for the rest of the section when those ideas are also derived from the same source. Finally, simple over-reliance on source material would be where the student properly references all material but does not actually include any original analyses in the work at all (iParadigm, 2003).

Citing, Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Expressing Another's Ideas

In principle, any thought or idea that is not the writer's own intellectual analysis must be properly referenced (Harvey, 2003; iParadigm, 2010) unless it is common knowledge (Thompson, 2008). Whereas historical facts (such as "the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7, 1941" need not be referenced, conclusions (such as "in many ways the attack on Pearl Harbor was predictable" must be referenced unless it reflects the writer's own conclusion or analysis (Thompson, 2008).