Research Guides: Avoiding Plagiarism!: Introduction

Plagiarism as Defined by IWU

"'To plagiarize is to include someone else's writing, information, or idea in a paper and fail to acknowledge what you took by indicating whose work it is'....

In other words, it is not giving credit where credit is due. Plagiarism is both a moral and ethical offense and sometimes a legal one.

Examples of plagiarism include:

1. Copying another person's actual words

without the use of quotation marks,

source citation, or footnotes.

2. Presenting another person's ideas or

theories in your own words without

citing the source.

3. Failing to acknowledge contribution

and collaboration from others.

4. Using information that is not common

knowledge without citing the source.

5. Submitting downloaded papers or

parts of papers, 'cutting and pasting,'

or paraphrasing or copying information

from Internet sources without proper

acknowledgement of a source." **

** For the university's statement on "Honesty,

Cheating, Plagiarism and Forgery, see the

catalog at: http://www.indwes.edu/catalog/

(Click search tab; enter "plagiarism")

A Fun Video Introduction to Plagiarism

To view the video full screen, click the icon at the lower right corner. To return to the plagiarism guide, press escape.

**Video is used by permission of Cape Fear College.

Did You Know?

Most cases of plagiarism can be identified by a professor in a few minutes using today's technology.

Plagiarizing in college can have a profound impact on your future, whether you're caught or not.

Take the time to educate yourself using this guide to learn how to avoid serious future problems.

Is it Plagiarism?

See answers at the bottom right of the tutorials page.

Quoting statistics without citing the source?

Using a short passage of music from an unpublished source in your composition without citation?

Adding a few lines of a friend's program into your software design project, with the friend's permission but without attribution?

Slightly updating an old paper you wrote and using it for a current class?

Summarizing an article and mentioning the author/journal in your sentence but not using a parenthetical citation?

Cutting and pasting from the Internet without using quotation marks?

Not citing the correct source or page number from which you took a quote?

Summarizing conflicting ideas from several sources without citing the sources?

Using graphics, audio or video found on multiple websites without citing them?