Giving Credit Where Credit is Due:

Avoiding Plagiarism in Academic Writing

Marie Garrett (English Studies and Theatre Librarian)

Allison Bolorizadeh (Journalism and Electronic Media Librarian)

November 13, 2007

Keywords Associated With Plagiarism

Cheating

Academic dishonesty

Copying and pasting

Intellectual property theft

Academic Honesty

Academic honesty involves:

Clearly articulating our own ideas

Giving credit to the sources of information we draw from

Accurately documenting those sources

Presenting research materials in a fair and truthful way

Plagiarism Defined

The act of taking someone's ideas or words and presenting them as your own without giving credit. It is a form of intellectual property theft.

Using specific information from a particular source without referencing it

Paraphrasing information without citing

Using direct quotations without citing the author

(Taken from the Office of Judicial Affairs Flier)

What Does Taking Someone’s Ideas Entail?

What Does Giving Credit Entail?

Putting others’ words in quotation marks

Citing your source(s)

Giving citations when using others’ ideas, even if those ideas are paraphrased in your own words, unless such information is recognized as common knowledge

Unintentional vs Intentional Plagiarism

Internet plagiarism (“Cyberplagiarism”)

Can take various forms:

Downloading or ordering papers from the web/commercial papermills, which are often of poor quality, and “research” could be outdated etc.

Copying and pasting pictorial representations or works of art, facts, statistics, graphs, or phrases from the web or an electronic database & submitting it as your own

Cyberplagiarism

Unintentional vs Intentional Plagiarism

Copying and pasting either text or graphics

Collaborating on a graded assignment without the instructor’s approval

Turning in the same paper to two classes unless permission is granted by both instructors

Plagiarism?

Unintentional vs Intentional Plagiarism

Summarizing/paraphrasing without proper documentation

Submitting another student’s work previously graded in another course or the same course.

Why Talk About Plagiarism?

Plagiarism violates the UT Standards of Conduct as stated on page 11 of the 2007-08 Hilltopics. http://web.utk.edu/~homepage/Hilltopics%202007-08.pdf

Could result in failure of the course

It devalues other people’s original work and takes an unfair advantage over other people’s efforts.

Plagiarism in the news:

When people aren’t careful in crediting their sources:

Ohio University Accuses Engineering Graduates of Plagiarism http://chronicle.com/news/article/652/plagiarism-scandal-at-ohio-u-claims-a-department-chairman

Kaavya Viswanathan's novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512948

UVA dismisses 48 in cheating scandal

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/South/11/25/virginia.plagarism/index.html

Ways to Avoid Plagiarism

ParaphrasingSummarizingQuoting

Use Paraphrasing to:

“Clarify difficult material by using simpler language,

Use another writer’s idea but not his or her exact words,

Create a consistent tone … for your paper as a whole, or

Interact with a point that your source has made. [Glenn, 542]

How to Paraphrase

State the idea in your words.Use about the same number of words as

the original source.Give a citation.

A source

Zimmer, Carl. Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain – And How it Changed the World. New York: Free, 2004. 7.

The maps that neuroscientists make today are like the early charts of the New World with grotesque coastlines and blank interiors. And what little we do know about how the brain works raises disturbing questions about the nature of our selves. [Glenn, 543]

An Inadequate Paraphrase:

The maps used by neuroscientists today resemble the rough maps of the New World. Because we know so little about how the brain works, we must ask questions about the nature of our selves (Zimmer 7).

[Glenn, 543]

An Adequate Paraphrase:

Carl Zimmer compares today’s maps of the brain to the rough maps made of the New World. He believes that the lack of knowledge about the workings of the brain makes us ask serious questions about our nature (7).

[Glenn, 543]

Summarize to:

“Convey ideas efficiently … by report[ing] a writer’s main idea and the most important [emphasis mine] support given for it”

[Glenn, 544-45]

How to Summarize

State the idea in your own words.Use fewer words than the original

source.Cite the source.

Source

Recent experience reveals that the biodiversity of nature may be beneficial to disease resistance and crop productivity, an idea that runs counter to current agricultural practice of creating superstrains of various crops. In China, for example, rice yields more than doubled and the requirements for antifungal applications declined after the introduction of a second strain of rice in fields (Doe, 2000, 221).

Summary

In his science news column, Doe reports that farmers in China have doubled their yields and reduced the occurrence of disease by planting two strains of rice together, a fact now calling into question the common use of superstrain planting (221).

[Harris, 166-67]

Use Quotations When:

“You want to retain the beauty or clarity of someone’s words,

You need to reveal how the reasoning in a specific passage is flawed or insightful. or

You plan to discuss the implications of the quoted material.” [Glenn, 541]

How to Quote

Use the exact wording and punctuation of the original source.

Enclose the passage in quotation marks.Cite the source.

A Quotation

According to Jerome Groopman, professor of medicine at Harvard University, “Pediatricians sometimes adopt extraordinary measures to insure that their patients are not harmed by treatments that have not been adequately studied in children” (33).

[Glenn, 540]

For citing sources, use:

APA (American Psychological Association)

MLA (Modern Language Association)Or the style specified by your instructor

Tips on Writing Honest Papers

Bibliography

Glenn, Cheryl and Loretta Gray. Hodges’ Harbrace Handbook. 16th ed. Boston: Thomson, Wadsworth, 2007.

Harris Robert A. The plagiarism Handbook: Strategies for Preventing, Detecting

and dealing with Plagiarism. Los Angeles: Pyrczak. 2001.

Contact us

Marie Garrett (English Studies and Theatre Librarian)mgarrett@utk.edu

Allison Bolorizadeh (Journalism and Electronic Media Librarian) asharp9@utk.edu