Mary Westervelt, Director, Technical Communication Program
Most students know that submitting work written by someone else as if it were one’s own work is a kind of stealing called plagiarism. A student (or other scholar) who has been caught plagiarizing can expect serious consequences, ranging from an F on a paper or in a course, to dismissal from an academic or scholarly community.
These days, when it is so easy to copy-paste text from electronic documents, the definition of plagiarism has been expanded to include use of text from a source in the following situations:
For a more detailed discussion of ethics in research and what does or does not constitute plagiarism, go to the Penn Office of Academic Integrity website.
Misperception: It’s okay to copy someone else’s Introduction/Background section when writing a research paper. No. It is true that this section reports on the work of others, and it is already neatly laid out with citations. However, the Introduction itself is the work of another author. Even if you cite the author, you’re letting someone else’s work take the place of research and analysis that you yourself should have done. In general, you would only cite someone else’s analysis if you wanted to critically analyze it, perhaps to say that it had missed one important paper.
Misperception: Graphics such as photos and charts don’t need to be cited. Wrong. Such graphics do have ‘authors’ who must be given credit. Give the source of the graphic in the caption. (Make sure any graphics you use actually make the point you want to make, and that they come from reliable sources.)
Misperception: Listing sources in a List of References is enough to avoid being accused of plagiarism. There’s no need to put citations in the text of the paper. No; each source listed in a List of References should be linked to specific information in the text of your report, and conversely, each specific claim, bit of data, or quote from another source must be marked with an in-text citation which links directly to the List of References.
Misperception: It’s okay to copy-paste the exact words from a source if I cite the source. No. Using another author’s words, without expressly indicating that the words are the other author’s and not your own, is plagiarism.
Misperception: The easiest and safest thing to do is to simply quote every useful sentence and put an in-text citation after it. Wrong. Pasting together quoted passages shows a lack of initiative and poor critical thinking. In your writing, you want to demonstrate not only that you went to the right sources, but that you showed discernment in evaluating them and developing your own analysis of the field. University of Pennsylvania classifies this use of sources as plagiarism.