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Plagiarism and Misuse of Sources
If you include someone
else's materials or ideas in your own research, you must acknowledge
the original author or creator. In a term paper, this acknowledgement
is usually called a citation. We’ll be discussing
proper citation practice in the next two sections of this OASIS module.
Improper
Citations: Failure to provide citations to the source material
is an unethical and illegal practice generally known as plagiarism.
You’ll most likely run into plagiarism issues at college when
you are writing papers. Writing experts have defined plagiarism like
this:
“Plagiarism
occurs when a [student] deliberately uses someone else’s language,
ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging
its source.”
Council of
Writing Program Administrators. "Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism:
The WPA Statement on Best Practices." WPA Position Statements
and Resolutions Jan. 2003. 12 Feb. 2004 <http://www.wpacouncil.org/positions/WPAplagiarism.pdf
>.
However,
plagiarism isn’t only related to writing. You can plagiarize
computer code and artistic works too. Here are some examples:
- If you copy
computer code written by another programmer and try to pass it off
as your own work, that can be considered plagiarism.
- If you use
a musical work composed by someone else and try to claim you wrote
the music, that too could be considered plagiarism.
- The same for
art works. If you try to claim an artwork you copied from another
artist is your work, you could be accused of plagiarism.
| What
if you Didn't Know |
| Sometimes students,
especially Freshmen, accidentally submit work that could be
considered to be plagiarism. This is known as Misuse
of Sources.
Misuse of sources has also been defined by the writing
experts:
“carelessly
or inadequately citing ideas and words borrowed from another
source. [ . . . ] Ethical writers make every effort to
acknowledge sources fully and appropriately in accordance
with the contexts and genres of their writing. A student
who attempts (even if clumsily) to identify and credit
his or her source, but who misuses a specific citation
format or incorrectly uses quotation marks or other forms
of identifying material taken from other sources, has
not plagiarized. Instead, such a student [has] failed
to cite and document sources appropriately.”
Council
of Writing Program Administrators. "Defining and
Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices."
WPA Position Statements and Resolutions Jan. 2003. 12
Feb. 2004 <http://www.wpacouncil.org/positions/WPAplagiarism.pdf
>.
Generally,
if you truly did not know you were committing plagiarism,
a professor will consider it a misuse of sources. But why
take a chance? Learning to properly document your information
sources will save you the hassle and grief of having to
convince your instructor you truly didn’t’ know.
Read the next module for more details. |
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