Guidelines on what constitutes plagiarism and ways it is identified.

1. Understanding and Avoiding
Plagiarism
Recognizing Plagiarism

2.  What is plagiarism?
 When does plagiarism occur?
 What causes plagiarism?
 What needs to be cited?
 When does something need to be cited?
 How is plagiarism detected?
 How is it prevented?
Recognizing Plagiarism:
This module answers the following questions:
Understanding and Avoiding
Plagiarism

3. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
“Plagiarism is intentionally or unintentionally giving the
impression that words or ideas from another source are your
own” (Clines & Cobb, 2006,p.21).
“Plagiarism is the act of passing off another’s words and
ideas as your own” (Winkler & McCuen, 2003,p.93).
What is plagiarism?
Recognizing Plagiarism:

4. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
“Plagiarism” means the unacknowledged use of words, ideas or
creations of another and includes situations where the student
reuses without acknowledgement their own previously written text,
ideas or creations when writing any new work.
As defined in the UWI Regulations on Plagiarism
for Graduate Students:
Recognizing Plagiarism:
The University recognizes two levels of plagiarism:
Level 1: where small quantities of the work are affected and/or the
breaches are minor, such as poor paraphrasing or
incorrect or missing citations.
Level 2: where large quantities of the work are affected and/or the
breaches are serious, such as when attribution is
insufficient to indicate that the borrowed material is not the
work of the student.

5. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
What is plagiarism?
 A form of academic dishonesty
 The act of not acknowledging the author or source of
information, ideas, words or data
 The act of claiming another’s work as one’s own
 The act of using another’s words or ideas without
proper citation
 The act of having a third party write one’s paper
 The act of reusing one’s own material without
acknowledgement
Recognizing Plagiarism:

6. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
When does plagiarism occur?
Plagiarism occurs when:
 Entire passages are incorporated into papers without
proper citation
 Word-for-word use of content is not enclosed in
quotation marks
 Passages are paraphrased or summarized without
proper citation
 Sources are misrepresented
 Personal opinions are attributed to a published source
Recognizing Plagiarism:

7. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
What causes plagiarism?
 Assuming that information is “common knowledge”
 Assuming that rewording a passage “makes it your
own”
 Forgetting to record source citations when taking
notes from several articles
 Using “cut and paste” techniques when note-taking
 Interjecting your opinions or reactions into a summary
of a source
 Changing the tone of a source to benefit your
message
Recognizing Plagiarism:

8. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
What needs to be cited?
 All intellectual property
 Common knowledge (if quoted, paraphrased or
summarized from a published source)
 Copyrighted material
 Public domain material
 Facts obtained from published sources
Recognizing Plagiarism:

9. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
When does something need to be cited?
If you are using someone else’s:
 Original words
 Ideas which you summarize or paraphrase
 Interesting or unique word, term or phrase
 Graphic, map, chart, figure, table or photograph
 Advertisement or cartoon
 Ideas from a lecture or speech
 Ideas from an interview or conversation
 Experiment or results from an experiment
 Ideas from videos, films, or television programs
Recognizing Plagiarism:

10. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
Common Sense:
“It is not the length of the writing that determines whether
you give credit to a source; it’s whether or not you use its
phrasing or ideas in your research paper” (Winkler &
McCuen, 2003, p.94).
Recognizing Plagiarism:

11. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
How is plagiarism detected?
 Electronically
 Services like turnitin.com
 Manually
 Incongruence in writing styles with other course
activities or previous papers
 Changes in voice or tone in written passages
 Currency of citation dates
 Obsolescence of hyperlinks
Recognizing Plagiarism:

12. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
How is plagiarism prevented?
 Disciplinary consequences for violations
 Assignment construction
 Creating new assignments every term
 Requiring submission of source documents with
assignments
 Student education
 Tutorials and information provided
 Practice in recognition
 Development of better writing and note-taking
skills
Recognizing Plagiarism:

13. Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
Source Materials
Sources on Plagiarism:
Aaron, J.E. (2004). The little, brown compact handbook (5th ed.). New York:
Pearson-Longman.
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication manual of the American
Psychological Association (5th
ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Clines, R.H., & Cobb, E.R. (2006). Research writing simplified: A documentation
guide (5th ed.). New York: Pearson-Longman.
Winkler, A.C., & McCuen, J.R. (2003). Writing the research paper: A handbook
(6th ed.). Boston, MA: Thomson/Heinle.