Define Plagiarism
Preventing plagiarism begins by teaching students what constitutes plagiarism and why it is a problem. It is necessary to offer students a specific and unequivocal definition of plagiarism, so they are clear about the behaviors included. Most definitions of plagiarism are brief and simple. Some make the point that intent is not relevant; it is the nature of the product that matters. Others limit the term to include only deliberate behaviors.
Harvard College Writing Program
Examples of definitions include the following:
Plagiarism is the use of another’s work, words, or ideas without attribution.
Yale University Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning
“In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common knowledge) material without acknowledging its source.”
Kent State University Writing Commons
“Plagiarism is the act of presenting someone else’s ideas, words, or work as your own without proper attribution. Among other things, it includes copying and pasting from sources, paraphrasing without giving credit, and submitting someone else’s work as your own.”
University of Iowa Libraries
Distinctions also have been made among types of plagiarism. For example, the Bowdoin College Office of the Dean of Students listed these four types of plagiarism:
Direct Plagiarism
“Direct plagiarism is the word-for-word transcription of a section of someone else’s work, without attribution and without quotation marks.”
Self-Plagiarism
“Self-plagiarism occurs when a student submits his or her own previous work, or mixes parts of previous works, without permission from all professors involved. Self-plagiarism also applies to submitting the same piece of work for assignments in different classes without previous permission from both professors.”
Mosaic Plagiarism
“Mosaic Plagiarism occurs when a student borrows phrases from a source without using quotation marks or finds synonyms for the author’s language while keeping to the same general structure and meaning of the original.”
Accidental Plagiarism
“Accidental plagiarism occurs when a person neglects to cite their sources, or misquotes their sources, or unintentionally paraphrases a source by using similar words, groups of words, and/or sentence structure without attribution.”
The Common Types of Plagiarism
The Santa Clara University Library listed two additional types of plagiarism:
Paraphrasing Plagiarism
Paraphrasing plagiarism “involves paraphrasing, or simply altering, a few phrases from your source material while still keeping most of the structure and meaning intact.”
Source-Based Plagiarism
Source-based plagiarism “involves omitting one or more sources from your references list…. The most severe source-based plagiarism involves falsifying sources and making up facts and data.”
Plagiarism
The Harvard Guide to Using Resources adds this type of plagiarism as well:
Uncited Paraphrasing
Uncited paraphrasing involves failure for provide a citation when your paraphrase a source “even if you have changed the wording significantly”.
What Constitutes Plagiarism?
Raise Ethical Issues
Students should be encouraged to consider the ethical implications of plagiarism, from both a personal perspective and the perspective of the professions they are about to enter. This discussion can be part of a larger discussion on academic integrity, trust, and taking responsibility for one’s behavior.
- This is a summary of questions for a discussion of academic ethics:
Discussing Academic Ethics - This blog posts presents another series of discussion questions, which the instructor asked students in order to clarify the ethical issues related to plagiarism:
Ethical or Not?
Additionally, professional organizations have principles and guidelines that prohibit plagiarism, and students should be informed of these expectations. For example, plagiarism of any type violates the following professional codes:
- American Psychological Association’s
Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct
11 Plagiarism
Psychologists do not present portions of another’s work or data as their own, even if the other work or data source is cited occasionally. - American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
Code of Ethics
8 Plagiarism
Marriage and family therapists who are the authors of books or other materials that are published or distributed do not plagiarize or fail to cite persons to whom credit for original ideas or work is due.
- The American Counseling Association
2014 Code of Ethics
5. Publications and PresentationsG.5.a. Use of Case Examples. The use of participants’, clients’, students’, or supervisees’ information for the purpose of case examples in a presentation or publication is permissible only when (a) participants, clients, students, or supervisees have reviewed the material and agreed to its presentation or publication or (b) the information has been sufficiently modified to obscure identity.G.5.b. Plagiarism. Counselors do not plagiarize; that is, they do not present another person’s work as their own.G.5.c. Acknowledging Previous Work. In publications and presentations, counselors acknowledge and give recognition to previous work on the topic by others or self.G.5.d. Contributors. Counselors give credit through joint authorship, acknowledgment, footnote statements, or other appropriate means to those who have contributed significantly to research or concept development in accordance with such contributions. The principal contributor is listed first, and minor technical or professional contributions are acknowledged in notes or introductory statements. - The National Board of Certified Counselors
Code of Ethics
NCCs shall take credit only for work that they have performed, and when quoting the work of others, shall provide appropriate references.
Sources
Harvard College Writing Program
What Constitutes Plagiarism?
Yale University Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning
What is Plagiarism?
Kent State University Writing Commons
Definition of Plagiarism
University of Iowa Libraries
What do students need to know about plagiarism?
Bowdoin College Office of the Dean of Students
The Common Types of Plagiarism
Santa Clara University Library
Plagiarism
University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching
Discussing Academic Ethics
Agile Learning Blog
Ethical or Not?
American Psychological Association’s
Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct
American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
Code of Ethics
The American Counseling Association
2014 Code of Ethics
The National Board of Certified Counselors
Code of Ethics
Provide Information About Avoiding Plagiarism
Another way to educate students about plagiarism is to provide them with information that will help them to avoid plagiarism, including examples of both plagiarism and correct ways to present and cite material. The University of California/Davis Office of Student Support and Judicial Affairs provided the following guidelines for avoiding plagiarism:
- When using sources, take notes from the source material and include the necessary information about the source that you will later use for your reference list and your citations.
- When writing your paper drafts, include citations. Attempting to add citations after you’ve written your paper will likely lead to missing or incorrect citations to source material.
- Use your own words and ideas. Paraphrasing software, including AI paraphrasing, generates text that you didn’t write and might not be permitted. Check with your instructor.
- Give credit for copied, adapted, or paraphrased material. If you copy and use exact words from another source, you must use quotation marks and cite the source. If you adapt a chart or paraphrase a sentence, you must still cite your source. Paraphrasing is restating the author’s ideas, information, and meaning in your own words.
- Ask if you can use spelling, grammar, paraphrasing, or translation applications. Using Microsoft Word for spelling and punctuation suggestions is more likely to be permitted than using a chatbot (e.g., ChatGPT or Grammarly) for paraphrasing.
- Avoid using others work with minor “cosmetic” changes. If the work is essentially the same as your source, give credit.
- Don’t assume information is “common knowledge”. It is safer to cite than not.
- Know what plagiarism is: Unintentional plagiarism may result from not knowing how to cite sources properly or sloppy research and note-taking, but it is still a violation.
Additional examples of guidelines for avoiding plagiarism include the following:
Northwestern University Office of the Provost
How to Avoid Plagiarism
Indiana University Writing Tutorial Services
Plagiarism: What It is and How to Recognize and Avoid It
Harvard University Writing Program
Harvard Guide to Using Sources
Yale University Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning
Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism
University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill Writing Center
Plagiarism
University of Pittsburgh Department of English
Plagiarism
Georgetown University Honor Council
What is Plagiarism?
Generative AI Use
Generative AI use poses additional ethical issues to consider; several of these are relevant to avoiding plagiarism. The Carleton Writing Across the Curriculum site provided five principles students can us to evaluate whether using AI is ethical:
Education: What is the purpose of the assignment? What skills is it intended to develop? Will using AI undermine or defeat the purpose of this assignment?
Attribution of Credit: Could using of AI obscure use of sources or draw on sources that can’t be document properly?
Maintaining a Scholarly Discourse: Will using AI help lead to simply restating ideas presented elsewhere rather than building on these ideas and expressing new ideas? Or will it cause me to simply restate ideas that have already been articulated elsewhere?
Academic Integrity: Would using AI imply intellectual labor that did not occur? Did using AI produce false data or misinformation?
Intellectual Property: Could using AI involve using text or ideas that are owned by other people?
Plagiarism and Artificial Intelligence
With regard to plagiarism in particular, students should be educated about specific uses that may be inappropriate. For example, Missouri State University/West Plains listed these specific ways Generative AI can be misused:
- “Use of generative AI to produce text for a writing assignment without proper citation of the prompt, software used, and text generated.
- Use of generative AI to paraphrase source text(s) without proper citation of the source material, software used, and suggested paraphrasing.
- Use of generative AI to edit/revise writing (including tools that automatically correct grammar and punctuation) without proper citation of the software used “
Generative AI Misuse
Students should also be educated about the information they must provide if they have used artificial intelligence resources in fulfilling an assignment. The University of Melbourne listed the elements to include in a declaration concerning AI use:
- The specific AI tools or technologies you used
- How the AI tools or technologies were used in completing the assignment
- The prompts used in the AI tools or technologies
- An explanation of how the output from the AI tools or technologies was used in the assignment
What to Include in a AI Use Declaration
The Arizona State University Library stipulated that “a disclosure or acknowledgement statement typically:
- Identifies the tool or tools used
- Explains how the tool was used/the purpose of using the tool
- Affirms that you reviewed and edited the final work and take full responsibility for the content”
AI Disclosure Statement
The University of Kansas Center for Teaching Excellence provided the following example from a syllabus: “Acknowledge your use of AI tools in any graded course submissions. Include a descriptive paragraph about Al’s role in the submission, share your submitted prompts, and identify the platform(s) used (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.). Inappropriate use of AI or incomplete disclosure of its use constitutes academic misconduct.” Acknowledging Use of AI Tools
Princeton University provided the following example of a template for disclosing AI use:
“This document was created with assistance from AI tools. Specifically, I used [insert which AI tool] for [insert purpose: brainstorming, outlining, generating content for sections of text on pages (insert pages), revising or proofreading text, formatting citations, etc.]. I have reviewed and edited this work and have retained records of my generative AI use. For more information on the extent and nature of AI usage, please contact me.”
Sources
Carleton Writing Across the Curriculum
Plagiarism and Artificial Intelligence
Missouri State University/West Plains Academic Integrity
Generative AI Misuse
The University if Melbourne Students
What to Include in a AI Use Declaration
Arizona State University Library
AI Disclosure Statement
Kansas University Center for Teaching Excellence
Acknowledging Use of AI Tools
Princeton University Scholarly Integrity
Disclosing Generative AI Use