Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: Avoiding Plagiarism in Academic Writing

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Giving Credit Where Credit is DueAvoiding
Plagiarism in Academic Writing

• Marie Garrett (English Studies and Theatre
  Librarian)Allison Bolorizadeh (Journalism and
  Electronic Media Librarian)
• November 13, 2007

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Keywords Associated With Plagiarism

• Cheating
• Academic dishonesty
• Copying and pasting
• Intellectual property theft

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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

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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.

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What Does Taking Someones Ideas Entail?

• 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)

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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

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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  poor quality, and research could be outdated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

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Cyberplagiarism
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Unintentional vs Intentional Plagiarism

• Copying and pasting either text or graphics
• Collaborating on a graded assignment without the
  instructors approval
• Turning in the same paper to two classes unless
  permission is granted by both instructors

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Plagiarism?
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Unintentional vs Intentional Plagiarism

• Summarizing/paraphrasing without proper
  documentation
• Submitting another students work previously
  graded in another course or the same course.

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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/Hilltopics202007-08
  .pdf
• Could result in failure of the course
• It devalues other peoples original work and
  takes an unfair advantage over other peoples
  efforts.

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Plagiarism in the news

• When people arent 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-c
  hairman
• Kaavya Viswanathan's novel How Opal Mehta Got
  Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life
  http//www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref512948
  
• UVA dismisses 48 in cheating scandal
• http//archives.cnn.com/2002/US/South/11/25/virgi
  nia.plagarism/index.html

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Ways to Avoid Plagiarism

• Paraphrasing
• Summarizing
• Quoting

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Use Paraphrasing to

• Clarify difficult material by using simpler
  language,
• Use another writers 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

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How to Paraphrase

• State the idea in your words.
• Use about the same number of words as the
  original source.
• Give a citation.

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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

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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

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An Adequate Paraphrase

• Carl Zimmer compares todays 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

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Summarize to

• Convey ideas efficiently by reporting a
  writers main idea and the most important
  emphasis mine support given for it
• Glenn, 544-45

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How to Summarize

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

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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).

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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

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Use Quotations When

• You want to retain the beauty or clarity of
  someones 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

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How to Quote

• Use the exact wording and punctuation of the
  original source.
• Enclose the passage in quotation marks.
• Cite the source.

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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

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For citing sources, use

• APA (American Psychological Association)
• MLA (Modern Language Association)
• Or the style specified by your instructor

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Tips on Writing Honest Papers
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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.

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Contact us

• Marie Garrett (English Studies and Theatre
  Librarian)
• mgarrett_at_utk.edu
• Allison Bolorizadeh (Journalism and Electronic
  Media Librarian)
• asharp9_at_utk.edu