Avoid Plagiarism

Plagiarism is theft; the courts have recognized it as a violation of copyright. There are many ways to violate copyright, including failure to acknowledge direct quotes or the paraphrasing of another person's work and the insufficient acknowledgment of such works.

The research process involves familiarizing yourself with the ideas of others in order to form your own perspectives or arguments, perform experiments, and create new work. In doing research you will often read books and articles that present different ideas and arguments from many authors. From these ideas you will create your own and incorporate them into your writing. As a responsible researcher, it is essential to give credit to the ideas and work of other researchers.

Here are some examples of plagiarism:

Buying or using any sort of paper or project from another person or service and turning it in as the product of your own work
Turning in someone else's work as your own with or without that person's knowledge
Submitting or presenting work turned in for one class to fulfill an assignment in another class without the prior agreement of the instructor involved
Copying statements from a source and using them without proper use of quotation marks and citations
Paraphrasing information from a source without proper citations

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