Definition: Plagiarism is using someone else's idea or work as your own without acknowledging their work. Plagiarism is often unintentional.
There are some important components in this definition that are very important to understand:
The following list of examples is from Simon Fraser University's "What is Plagiarism" page:
A student is considered to have "plagiarized" when he or she has failed to acknowledge his or her sources or has not acknowledged her sources accurately and completely. Plagiarism can occur in many types of assignments, including:
Plagiarism occurs any time and every time a writer relies upon the words, ideas, data, theses, positions or product (drawing, design, computer program) of another writer without acknowledging that course fully and correctly.
Thank you to Saint Anselm College for this content - Academic Integrity & Plagiarism Tutorial: Plagiarism
Some types of plagiarism are intentional attempts to deceive the professor. Intentional plagiarism occurs when a student deliberately chooses to use other people's ideas in part or all of his own assignment without giving credit to the other writer(s). By turning in this type of plagiarized assignment, the student is claiming that the work is his own, but is is not.
All of these examples are types of intentional plagiarism. It doesn't matter whether you paid for the essay or got it for free, whether your friend gave you permission to use her paper, or whether the original source is published or unpublished. It doesn't even matter if the source has an author listed or if it is anonymous. If you did not write the paper, but you turn it in with your name on it as if you did write it, you have intentionally plagiarized. This type of plagiarism is easy to identify and understand. In these cases, the student didn't do the work, but decided to behave as if he or she did do the work.
Even if a student does not plagiarize the entire assignment, intentional plagiarism can occur. If the student copies and pastes a paragraph, a sentence, or any content from another written or electronic source with out acknowledging that source, he has intentionally plagiarized.
Other forms of intentional plagiarism occur when a student:
Thank you to Saint Anselm College for this content - Academic Integrity & Plagiarism Tutorial: Plagiarism
Other types of plagiarism are not completely "intentional" in the same way as the previous examples. In fact, many cases of plagiarism occur as a result of a student's sloppiness, laziness, or failure to learn how to acknowledge sources.
Unfortunately, if you plagiarize because you don't know how to use quotations or because you have not paraphrased correctly, you still have committed plagiarism and violated the school's academic honesty policy. Upholding academic integrity requires attention and effort. If you don't care where you are getting your ideas, or if you don't feel like looking up the correct documentation format, you might end up turning in plagiarized work.
Many cases of unintentional plagiarism arise from bad record-keeping and lack of skill in referring to sources. Also, knowing when and how to cite sources correctly is sometimes confusing for any student--even the most serious and organized student. The next sections will explain what sorts of information and elements in your papers require citation.
Thank you to Saint Anselm College for this content - Academic Integrity & Plagiarism Tutorial: Plagiarism
When you "acknowledge" a source, you are giving credit to the original author of the material you have used in your assignment. You are noting that an idea, phrase, data, etc., is not an original idea of your own; rather you have learned the material from another author. Other words for the verb "to acknowledge" are "to attribute" or "to credit." In almost all disciplines, writers acknowledge sources in two ways: citations and bibliographic entries.
Creative or original images, language, or ideas that belong to other people, not ourselves. These other people might be writers, scholars, artists, professors, lecturers, or subjects who are interviewed. Your friend or fellow student can, of course, be any of these things, so a student has rights to his or her intellectual property, even if his or her paper is not published.
A "citation" is a written notation that indicates the source of the material you have used in your paper in every instance that you have done so. Different disciplines require different types of citations. Some disciplines require you to use parenthetical references within the paragraphs or your paper (MLA style, APA style) each time you use material from another source. Other disciplines require footnotes or endnotes at the bottom of the page or end of the assignment (Chicago style, Turabian).
Citations are not the same as the complete list of sources--usually called a bibliography or works cited list--required in almost all assignments. Citations in your paper, whether they are parenthetical references, footnotes, or endnotes--do two things:
Also called a list of "Works Cited" or "Sources," this is the page that lists all of the sources that you have relied upon in your assignment. Many documentation styles require both citations (parenthetical references, endnotes or footnotes) and a bibliography. Some styles do not require both. All bibliographies must follow a specific format. The documentation style used in your discipline will tell you what to name this list and how to format it.
Your "sources" are your "research"--the works that you have located, read and relied upon to create your finished assignment. These works may be scholarly articles, reports, government documents, reference books, newspaper reports or articles, web pages, electronic sources, lectures, works of art, interviews, television programs, or other original work by scholars and experts.
By Eastern Gateway Community College. Used with permission.