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I did not Plagiarize! Think Again: Plagiarism

This module will help students understand and identify various kinds of plagiarism and how to avoid commiting it.

According to NU Student Code of Conduct, plagiarism is “intentionally or carelessly presenting the work of another as one’s own. It includes submitting an assignment purporting to be the student’s original work which has wholly or in part been created by another person. It also includes the presentation of the work, ideas, representations, or words of another person without customary and proper acknowledgment of sources.”

Plagiarism occurs when a person:

  1. directly copies one or more sentences of another person’s written work without proper citation, including cutting and pasting material obtained from the Internet or other electronic sources;
  2. changes words but copies the sentence structure of a source without giving credit to the original source, or closely paraphrases one or more paragraphs without acknowledgment of the source of the ideas, or uses graphs, figures, drawings, charts or other visual/audio materials without acknowledging the source or the permission of the author;
  3. submits false or altered information in any academic exercise, including making up data for an experiment, altering data, citing nonexistent articles, contriving sources, etc.;
  4. turns in all or part of the assignment done by another student and claims it as their own;
  5. uses a paper writing service, has another student write a paper, or uses a foreign language translation and submits it as their own original work;
  6. in computer programming class, uses computer code written by another student.

A plagiarism prevention tool company has identified various types of plagiarism based on instructor insights (Turnitin, 2012). The plagiarism spectrum consists of ten types of plagiarism and it will be discussed in detail below. Read and reflect on these and you may be responsible for committing any of them. 

Reference: Turnitin. (2012). The plagiarism spectrum: tagging 10 types of unoriginal work. From http://turnitin.com/assets/en_us/media/plagiarism_spectrum.php?_ga=2.193443501.1634687614.1509531065-2098262684.1509531065

Forms of Plagiarism
Example of a Plagiarized Content
Original
What could have been done

Verbatim (word for word) quotation without clear acknowledgment

All disciplines offer unique but limited perspectives onto the social reality they study.

All disciplines offer unique but limited perspectives onto the social reality they study.

(Taken from Essentials of Transdisciplinary Research by Leavy, p. 15)

Paraphrase the statement:

Each field of study has its own unique yet partial way of seeing the social reality

Cutting and pasting from the Internet without clear acknowledgment

Copied verbatim: Under the guidance of Mr. Shigeo Katsu, since December 2010, Nazarbayev University had achieved great success in various spheres. 

Under the guidance of Mr. Shigeo Katsu, since December 2010, Nazarbayev University had achieved great success in various spheres. 

Cite the source:

Nazarbayev University. (2018). The State medal awarded to the President of Nazarbayev University. Retrieved from https://nu.edu.kz/news/state-medal-awarded-president-nazarbayev-university

Or paraphrase and cite:

The Nazarbayev University reached a great milestone since the start of the presidency of Mr. Shigeo Katsu in December 2010.

Nazarbayev University. (2018). The State medal awarded to the President of Nazarbayev University. Retrieved from https://nu.edu.kz/news/state-medal-awarded-president-nazarbayev-university

Collusion
 

You and your friend decided to work together. Both of you will divide the tasks and you will combine later on but you submitted almost the same work.

You have an essay assignment. You are required to submit the essay individually.

Just work independently

Inaccurate and improper citation

YOON-JOO, L. (2017). How Do Self-Values Play a Role In Consumers' Perception of CSR Advertising? The Moderated Mediation Effect of Self-Referencing. Journal Of Advertising Research

Yoon-Joo, L. (2017). How Do Self-Values Play a Role In Consumers' Perception of CSR Advertising? The Moderated Mediation Effect of Self-Referencing. Journal Of Advertising Research, 57(4), 422-435. doi:10.2501/JAR-2017-050

Verify references

Failure to acknowledge assistance

When authors forgot to mention the interviewees

“The authors wish to thank the following people for providing the information the authors need to

accomplish this paper”

Document all the people who was involved in research

Self-plagiarism

Using some of the paragraphs you wrote from a former class.  This recycling of one’s own work is considered self-plagiarism. https://www.utdallas.edu/library/plagiarism/plagiarismexamples.html

Original work.

Avoid duplication of your own work because same results will be shared and that will lower the value of the study

 

Source: University of Oxford. (2018). Plagiarism. https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism?wssl=1 

To avoid putting yourself into harm because of plagiarism, here are basic things to remember: 

  1. Summarize and paraphrase the original text in your own words. 
  2. If you are copying the original text, always enclose it in quotation marks. But, do not make this a habit of just directly copying everything. Show some originality.
  3. Always cite and refer all sources using an appropriate citation format. 

Make sure to practice these reminders from the very beginning.

Books in the Library

reference
referencing
plagiarism
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