What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is the act of taking somebody else’s ideas or words and using them as your own. It is expected that students will build on the work of others but they must always give credit to the authors whose thoughts or words they are using.
Plagiarism is a serious academic offense, even if it’s unintentional.
Plagiarism is academic misconduct. Consequences include:
- Failing your assignment
- Failing your course
- Being suspended from RDP
- Being expelled from RDP
- Not being accepted at another college or university after being expelled
Text adapted from SFU (CC BY-NC 4.0). Graphic by RDP Library (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
What does “submitting my own work” mean?
As a student, you are expected to be the sole author of any work that you submit, unless it is a group project. If a friend, family member, or tutor completes your assignment for you, then you are no longer the sole author of that assignment.
Receiving feedback and discussing ideas is an important part of the writing process. It is completely appropriate to receive feedback from your instructor, an RDP writing tutor, or the staff in the Library. Their role is to give you feedback in an ethical manner that will make you a stronger writer. Be cautious of anyone who suggests that they can substantially edit the work for you.
Academic Integrity Alex says...
For ethical help and feedback on your writing, connect with RDP Writing Skills Tutoring
Can I re-use my own work in several courses?
Submitting the same, or substantially the same essay, project or presentation for more than one course without prior approval is academic misconduct.
Reusing a paper is not always wrong, especially if you want to build on your previous work. If you would like to re-use your work, ask first so you do not mislead your instructor. If you are allowed to re-use your work, you will need to cite yourself and your original paper.
Academic Integrity Alex says...
If you do not know how to cite yourself, you can ask us at RDP Library.
But what about research?
As a student, you are expected to read, analyze, and respond to the ideas of others when writing your papers. The key to doing this without plagiarizing is by giving credit to the author of ideas that are not your own.
Some assignments will ask you to include information from your textbook and from class, to show that you understand it. For these assignments, you will still need to give credit for the source of your knowledge.
Some assignments will ask you to conduct your own research and include information from books, journal articles, or websites. For these assignments, you need to acknowledge the source of your information so your instructor can find it.
Acknowledging and crediting source material can be done through citation. You will learn more about citation in the next section.
Common Error - Direct Plagiarism
About this Error
It is good to incorporate research from other sources (e.g. textbooks, websites, articles) into your assignments. However, copying another writer's work with no attempt to acknowledge that the material was found in an external source is considered direct plagiarism.
Example
Source Text
Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community's willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost. Normal science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments.
(Source: Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)
Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Some scientists say that the success of the enterprise comes from the community’s willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost. Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments.
Yes, this is plagiarism!
In this example, the student copied their draft almost word-for-word from the original source. Even though the student removed some sentences from the original, they still used another person's words and ideas and presented them as their own. The student has no acknowledgement (such as quotation marks) to distinguish their own words from the words copied from the source.Correcting the Error
To avoid this type of plagiarism, you must acknowledge that your ideas and/or words came from a source. If you use words taken directly from the source, you must enclose the words in quotation marks:
Thomas Kuhn asserts that scientific research "is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Much of the success of the enterprise derives from the community's willingness to defend that assumption, if necessary at considerable cost" (5).
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
You may also paraphrase the source material into your own words. Paraphrasing is expressing the information from a source with your own words without changing the meaning of the original source. Paraphrased information also required acknowledgement of the original source.
Thomas Kuhn asserts that the process of scientific research intrinsically assumes the scientific community understands the world and how it works. Since this assumption is the foundation of most scientific knowledge, scientists are willing to go to great lengths to defend it, even to the point of suppressing substantial new information that would undermine the basic proposition (Kuhn 5).
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Crediting Others' Ideas
Graphic by Sara LeBlanc, University of Waterloo (CC BY-NC 4.0)
