Plagiarism Information for Students

An issue that isn't really copyright but gets confused easily

Important for its academic significance

Violations of the Code of Academic Responsibility (AU Student Handbook)  "Appropriating the ideas, concepts, images (including but not limited to drawings, designs, or photographs) or language of another person and presenting them without attribution."

Not just at AU, but across higher education and in the professional world, using someone else's work without identifying the source compromises scholarly integrity.

Getting it right takes understanding and practice

Quote Your Source Properly

Paraphrase Your Source Properly   Read more: Quoting and Paraphrasing @ The Writing Center, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Cite Your Source Properly  In academic writing, there are standard ways of citing sources called “styles.” The style an author uses will depend upon the audience. It will usually be someone like a course instructor who will dictate what style to use for a paper or other kind of work.

• APA is common for writing in the social sciences and some sciences.
• MLA is common for writing in the liberal arts and humanities.
• APA Citation Style and MLA Citation Style are Landman Library favorite webpages for information about citing sources (OWL @ Purdue University).

Read more  Giving Recipe Creators Their Due

Equally important for avoiding misunderstanding

Citing your sources or quoting exact wording with proper attribution is not. Paraphrasing effectively is not.

Citing common knowledge is also not. What is common knowledge differs depending upon the audience.

Read more  What is Common Knowledge? (Academic Integrity at MIT)

An issue that's easy to get wrong

Everything on the internet was created by someone. Take the time to figure out who authored the text or the image you want to use.

Citation styles give options if you can’t find an author’s name, e.g., using an organization's name.

Tools for helping to get it right

Canvas (AU's course management system) has a built-in plagiarism checker to help instructors determine if work has plagiarized content. But that's too late to find out.

There are various free web applications that will highlight possible instances of plagiarism.

Learn more  Search "review free plagiarism checker" (no quotation marks) in your favorite internet browser to find some to try.

A different type of tool for helping to get it right

Type in your information and the generator gives you the proper citation, hopefully. Garbage in, garbage out. You still need to know your citation style well-enough to proofread, but a generator could save you time and effort.

• EndNote Web is paid for by Arcadia University. It works with many of our article databases to collect and organize your articles and produce your citation list.
• Mendeley is a popular, free application that also works with many article databases.
• Zotero is a popular, free application that works with article databases and webpages.

Compare the three but remember EndNote Web is paid for by Arcadia University.

Learn more  Search "review free citation generators" (no quotation marks) in your favorite internet browser to find others to try.