Presenting someone else's ideas as your own and/or not giving credit to sources that you use in any project is considered plagiarism. Not only is plagiarism dishonest, it violates college policy.
The only information you do not have to document is common knowledge or information most anyone with a common culture would know. We know that George Washington was the first president of the United States or that Hawaii is the fiftieth state. You do not have to find a source for that type of information. What about common sayings such as “haste makes waste?” It is not plagiarism if you do not find the source for such phrases. However, if you can find the origin of the saying, in this case, from Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac, your paper will benefit from enhanced credibility.
There are several different ways to cite the materials you use in your projects. Make sure your teacher tells you what style to follow for your bibliography. Usually you will need to cite internally (inside the content of your project) and in a bibliography at the end of your project. Think of your bibliography as credits at the end of the film. Everyone who was involved in making the project possible deserves credit.
There are many resources that can help you. There are citation help guides for quick reference or entire books that will explain citation styles. You can borrow them from the library or buy them at the bookstore. Ask your professor or librarian for assistance.
Internal citations in the paper itself are necessary after a direct quote, which should always be in quotation marks, or after an idea has been paraphrased. These citations usually appear at the end of a sentence or paragraph.
All copyrighted items used to create your paper or project must be in your bibliography. For example, you would cite books, newspaper articles, Internet pages, images, and multimedia information you included in your project.
Professors will often be able to tell if your writing or presentation is an original creation or from someone else. They also will want to make sure that the initial creator of the works used is being given proper credit. This practice is ethical and legal. If you didn't give credit properly, your integrity and class grade would likely suffer. Stealing words and ideas is considered theft.
“Academic Integrity & Plagiarism.” 18 Aug. 2009. Texas A&M University Libraries. 17 Sept. 2009.
http://library.tamu.edu/help/help-yourself/using-materials-services/online-tutorials/academic-integrity/index.html
Avoiding Plagiarism guide from Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL)
You Quote It, You Note It!
- an interactive plagiarism prevention tutorial
from Vaughn Memorial Library @ Acadia University in Nova Scotia
View the LSCS guide to Academic Integrity and Student Success that briefly explains student responsibilities when creating coursework.
Professors using Turnitin.com receive an originality report that they review before identifying a paper as plagiarized. They can set limits on small matches of text to eliminate common phrases being marked as plagiarized (Turnitin 56). If a professor notifies a student about plagiarized content in a project, there should be a discussion about what content originated with the student vs. an outside source. If needed, the LSCS academic appeals process can be used.
Reusing a paper as is without any changes is problematic, given the specific requirements of most assignments. Also, it is a display of respect for your professor to recycle a paper from another course. Creating a new paper for a course assignment is a chance to enhance your communication skills that many employers value. If you have an existing research paper topic that you think would work for another course, ask your professor if you can revise and update the previous paper to meet the needs of the new assignment (MLA 59).
If an idea comes from a source you used for information, it remains their idea even if you rework the wording. So you need to give credit to that original author of the idea.
If you paraphrase a sentence, you need to reword most of the sentence and change the structure of the sentence to avoid plagiarism, keeping the original author’s idea intact. Remember, you still need to cite the source.
English, art, and humanities favor MLA, although other disciplines may use it because it is the most familiar citation style. Psychology, sociology, and health professions use APA most frequently. Chicago-style (CMOS/CMS) can be found in research papers for history and religion. The "Turabian" guide is associated with CMOS/CMS and includes research paper format details for undergraduates. Other types of citation styles exist, also (Harris). Check with each professor for their preferred citation style unless it is listed in assignments or the syllabus.
The library offers MLA and APA paper formatting help. Also, find information on Chicago-style paper formatting.
A research assignment’s usual aim is to assess a student’s ability to share his/her unique ideas with support from reliable and pertinent sources. Individual professors may limit the number of direct quotes you can use in assignments, but your goal is to display your understanding of ideas through your words primarily, supported with summaries, paraphrases, and to a lesser extent, quotations at opportune points in your writing. For maximum effect, quotations can be used to express unique and powerful ideas that cannot or should not be written in any other way. But you can use quotations inside paraphrases and summaries as well. Proper names and organizations do not need quotations around them as they are unique and have no synonym (Kirszner and Mandell 268).
Professors want you to demonstrate your understanding of source material. Paraphrasing is an excellent chance to read, analyze, comprehend, and reword information, based on your grasp of a source’s content. Find instructions for writing a paraphrase from LSC-CyFair Branch Library.
A paraphrase seeks to preserve the essence of an idea and its details in about the same length as the original information, but in a different order with mostly different words. A summary condenses original information to only the main idea from a longer to shorter length and with different wording (“Summary”). Find examples of paraphrase and summary from LSC-CyFair Branch Library.
Citations created by databases or citation creators are not 100% correct in most cases and students must be able to identify what is missing or incorrect in a generated citation. So check the citations for accuracy using library guides to help get a better grade on your assignment.
Different disciplines focus on the position of citation elements based on type of research. APA favors the authors and currency of research in scholarly journals primarily, MLA is more interested in a variety of research and specific analysis by different authors, and CMOS/CMS stresses content above citation using footnotes instead of in-text citations (“Why”). In the workplace, you will find companies also have varying style guides and expectations for documentation. Therefore, it is beneficial to learn, understand, and practice similar nuances now.
Most of them get a passing grade for being close to correct, while adding other elements that are not necessary. Some allow you to simply enter a URL for a web page and the citation generator pulls information from the page and creates a citation for you. Other types of resources require you to identify citation elements and enter them into the spaces provided. So some of the accuracy depends on what you enter or leave blank. We like KnightCite because it seems to know some of the unique aspects of citation styles and reformats citations to fit those aspects, yet it is not perfect, so you still have to check the citation against library guides.
A good faith effort to cite sources correctly is important for your success in college. It is helpful to review citations with the library guides before you submit your research project and citations. Ask your professor for information on how they grade citations, so you know how much is deducted for incorrect citations.
Yes, you need to give credit to the original source you used by citing it in the body of your project every time it is referenced accompanied by one detailed listing for the source in your works cited, references, or bibliography.
Professors want you to learn the rules for crediting others while adding your own ideas. You need to separate your thoughts from other authors and citation is the method, so you can be assessed on your understanding of valid support for your ideas while sharing your own ideas. Also, citation is part of the LSCS academic integrity policy.
If an idea comes from a source you used for information, it remains their idea even if you rework the wording. So you need to give credit to that original author of the idea.
Facts or popular sayings that are published in most popular reference tools like encyclopedias, almanacs, and atlases may be considered common knowledge if you believe your audience knows them. So if you were speaking to a group of students in Texas, most of them should know that the large body of water that forms one of our borders is the Gulf of Mexico. You would not need to cite that fact. When in doubt about your audience’s common knowledge, go ahead and cite the fact (Axelrod and Cooper 428).
Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. The Concise St. Martin’s Guide to Writing. 7th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015.
Harris, Jennifer. “FAQ: What Citation Style Should I Use?” Shapiro Library, Southern New Hampshire U, 25 Aug. 2017, libanswers.snhu.edu/faq/69000.
Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. The Holt Handbook, 6th ed., Thomson/Heinle, 2002.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2009.
“Summary and Paraphrase.” Anoka-Ramsey Community College, webs.anokaramsey.edu/stankey/Writing/MLA_SPQ/SummPara.htm.
Turnitin Instructor User Manual. Turnitin, turnitin.com/static/resources/documentation/turnitin/training/Instructor_Originality_Report_Chapter_2.pdf.
“Why Are There Different Citation Styles?” Yale Center for Teaching and Learning, ctl.yale.edu/writing/using-sources/why-are-there-different-citation-styles.
It is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to the authors of “original works of authorship,” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works (Copyright Basics1). Copyright is automatically applied when the work is created and “fixed in a copy” in some format (e.g. paper, film, audio, etc.), even if it does not mention or list the © symbol or the word “copyright” (Copyright Basics 5). Title 17 of the United States Code encompasses copyright law.
Note that plagiarism is a separate issue from copyright infringement. It is possible to plagiarize a source without infringing on copyright, and vice versa. For example, if a student copies and submits a chapter of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (a public domain work) for an assignment, they have plagiarized but not broken copyright law. On the other hand, if that student uploaded the 2005 film adaptation to YouTube, noting that the movie belongs to Working Title Films and StudioCanal, the writers, the producers, and so on, they have not plagiarized the movie (they gave credit to the creators) but they have infringed the copyright (by duplicating and distributing an unauthorized copy of the work).
It can be frustrating and confusing to figure out what you can use and how, as there are no specific quantities for how many pictures or what length of video or audio you can borrow established by copyright law.* Educational uses are typically favored, but this factor alone is not enough to guarantee you’re good to go; neither is simply giving credit to the original creator.
Some works, particularly digital media, may also come with license terms and conditions that can limit or expand what you can do with the content beyond what copyright law says. Often you have agreed to the terms simply by using the content. Library-licensed content available through our databases is a good place to look for more permissive licensing; the Creative Commons is another example (explained further down the page).
Requesting permission from the copyright owner is another good option, but this process can be hampered by determining who the owner actually is, how to contact them, and waiting for a response. Many times the permission comes with a price tag, as well.
Fortunately, copyright law has provisions for “fair use” exceptions (among others) that let you use portions of works without having to ask for permission. You may freely use public domain works however you choose.
* You may come across guidelines suggesting, for example, “no more than 10% or 3 minutes of a film” or “a maximum of 30 seconds of a song.” These recommendations derive from a set of guidelines that attempt to establish conservative but definite figures for usage. However, these recommendations are not legally binding and are not part of copyright law (Crews 77-79). Actual permissible uses (fair use) may, depending on situation, greatly exceed those guidelines.
Fair use is a set of exceptions built in to copyright law that enables people to make limited use of copyrighted materials without having to request permission. Fair use is always determined on a case-by-case basis by weighing all four factors against each other. No single factor is more important than any others.
The U.S. courts use the following criteria to determine fair use (“More Information”; Crews):
Any work with no copyright protection is labeled as public domain and is available for anyone to use with no restrictions. Works published before 1923 as well as government documents are in the public domain. A work whose copyright has lapsed also becomes part of the public domain. Works may also be deliberately placed in the public domain by the creator. ("Welcome")
Just because a work is publicly available does not mean it is in the legal public domain. Similarly, if a work is no longer actively being published or is not easily purchased does not mean it is no longer protected under copyright.
The Creative Commons refers to a set of pre-written licenses designed for content creators to explicitly make their works available for use and modification. It does not replace copyright law and CC-licensed works are still copyrighted, but the terms provide more flexibility to creators who don’t want “all rights reserved” (“About the Licenses”). You will typically be able to recognize these types of works by the license icon which lets you know what conditions you need to meet to be able to reuse the work. You will see CC-BY at a minimum, meaning you can do anything with the work so long as you provide attribution to the creator.
Creative Commons Licenses image CC-BY Barbara Waxer
You shouldn't think of copyrighted images, music, etc any differently than you do the articles (which are also copyrighted!) you use to get information. Anything not original to you should be cited (credit given to the creator), and you should not use others' works excessively (i.e. limit how much you use).
Remember, you may be able to use copyrighted content! If you'd like to not have to worry about it, though, here are some options that explicitly give you permission to re-use:
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