A Practical Guide To Avoiding This Trap
ACTIONS THAT MIGHT BE SEEN AS PLAGIARISM
REASONS WHY SOME STUDENTS MIGHT PLAGIARIZE
Common Forms of Plagiarism
(www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm)
This handout was compiled from the following sources:
www.virtualsalt.com
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/print/research/r_plagiary.html)
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Tenth Edition by Joseph G
ACTIONS THAT MIGHT BE SEEN AS PLAGIARISM
- Buying, stealing, or borrowing any printed, written, or previously distributed documents without proper citation
- Taking credit for a paper written (wholly or partially) by someone else
- Copying from another source without citing, either on purpose or by accident
- Using the source too closely when paraphrasing without proper citation
- Building on someone’s ideas without citation
REASONS WHY SOME STUDENTS MIGHT PLAGIARIZE
- Poor time management and planning skills
- A research paper/project requires time to properly develop and if put off for too long, you might make poor choices.
- When faced with many activities and choices, the research paper/project gets put off.
- Fear of your own ideas “not being good enough.”
- You did the research, but your initial drafts are below your expectations.
- What you find published is better than what you think you can write.
- You think you just need to “get through” a class, rather than learn what is being taught.
- Many students often times put themselves under tremendous pressure to get “perfect” grades in all classes and then in a time crunch, see various methods of plagiarism as a shortcut to writing something that will get a good grade with minimal effort.
- You might think that a teacher wants a “given,” and that some of your original ideas might be marked down for being wrong.
- It is easier, faster, and more fun. This is also known as the “I won’t get caught” clause.
- Yes, you will get caught.
- The price you pay is not worth it. The price can include: a bad grade, embarrassment, expulsion from a university, loss of credentials and/or degrees, loss of job, etc. You might also have to pay the original author a lot of money for using his/her writing without giving them credit.
Common Forms of Plagiarism
(www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm)
- Cutting and pasting to create a paper from several sources. These "assembly-kit" papers are often betrayed by wide variations in tone, diction, and citation style. The introduction and conclusion are often student-written and therefore noticeably different from and weaker than the often-glowing middle.
- Downloading a free research paper. Many of these papers have been written and shared by other students. Since “paper swappers” are often not among the best students, free papers are often of poor quality, in both mechanics and content. Some of the papers are surprisingly old (with citations being no more recent than the seventies).
- Buying a paper from a commercial paper mill. These papers can be good--and sometimes they are “too good.” Teachers can, and will, compare papers to a student’s in-class writing assignment to see if it is realistically possible for a student to do the level of work that is presented. Teachers are NOT looking for perfection; they are looking for signs of a valuable learning experience and intellectual growth.
- Copying an article from the Web or an online or electronic database. Only some of these articles will have the quantity and type of citations that academic research papers are expected to have.
- Copying a paper from a local source. This includes turning in a paper that a student completed in a previous year.
- Quoting less than all the words copied. This practice includes premature end quotation marks or missing quotation marks. A common type of plagiarism occurs when a student quotes a sentence or two, places the end quotation mark and the citation, and then continues copying from the source. Or, the student may copy from the source verbatim without any quotation marks at all, but adding a citation, implying that the information is the student's summary of the source. Teachers will often times check citations to confirm information.
- Faking a citation. In lieu of real research, some students will make up quotations and supply fake citations. As stated above, part of grading a research project, teachers will check references and they should be able to find any and all citations. Another form of this type of plagiarism is when a student cites a legitimate source, but has not used any information from this source. This is known as “citation padding.”
This handout was compiled from the following sources:
www.virtualsalt.com
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/print/research/r_plagiary.html)
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Tenth Edition by Joseph G