| UNIT DESCRIPTION |
| CHOOSING A TOPIC |
| PRELIMINARY RESEARCH |
| DEVELOPING YOUR QUESTION |
| AVOIDING PLAGARISM |
| UNDERSTANDING CITATION |
| REFERENCE LIST |
AVOIDING PLAGIARISM
What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is academic dishonesty. It occurs when one person uses the work of another without giving credit to the original source. Plagiarism is not only the appropriation of the entire or partial work of another but includes the use of ideas, key terms, or language without crediting the original author.
Handing in the same work for credit in two different courses without the permission of both the instructors is also considered plagiarism.
Why Does it Happen?
Deliberate plagiarism occurs when someone tries to pass off the work, ideas, or terms of another as his or her own. Unintentional plagiarism can occur when someone is unfamiliar with the proper way to cite a source or because of a lack of understanding of when a source needs to be cited. Sometimes plagiarism occurs because of sloppy note-taking that fails to distinguish between the ideas of others and the researcher's own ideas. There are many situations that result in intentional and/or unintentional plagiarism, all of which should be avoided!
How Can it Be Avoided?
The best ways to avoid plagiarism are to plan ahead, stay organized, and learn to cite sources properly. Expectations at an undergraduate level are rarely that you will be coming up with your own original theories. Rather, you are usually researching the theories of others in order to familiarize yourself with the field and develop skills of critical thinking. Even at more advanced levels and for professional researchers, ideas never develop in a void. Research is always built on what came before and so the sources that gave the inspiration or background for new ideas must be credited. Many of the ideas and concepts you will include in your papers you will have found somewhere and professors will expect to see your sources credited. If you give credit properly, you will likely never find yourself in a position of having unintentionally plagiarized.
If, however, you are thinking of intentionally plagiarizing, for whatever reason, remember that the consequences are serious. If you feel you cannot complete an assignment before the due date or don’t feel up to the task, see your professor in advance to deal with the situation rather than risking expulsion from the University. See the University Calendar for more information on plagiarism and for the University's policy on academic dishonesty.
Plagiarism is more of a temptation when students leave their research and/or writing to the last minute and do not have the time to read material and process it before writing. Therefore one of the most important considerations in avoiding plagiarism is effective time-management.
- Give yourself enough time to complete your preliminary research, your main research, and your writing.
- Learn to use the research tools available to you. You should only need to do this once and it will be one of the best investments you can make as a student.
- Make time to use in-library resources as well as Web-based material.
- Allow time to use Interlibrary Loan to access important sources that the Library does not have on hand.
- Allow yourself time to read, and learn to read effectively and efficiently. If you have developed a clear topic and question, your reading will be more selective and your research more efficient.
- Allow yourself time for additional research as your question develops and new complexities of the question become apparent.
If you have a weakness in the area of time management, consider attending a workshop offered by the Counselling Centre.
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Effective and Efficient Reading – See Badke Chapter 8 |
Staying Organized
Staying organized while researching will help you avoid unintentional plagiarism. Effective organization means not only knowing where you have put things but more importantly, where you got things. Knowing how to take notes can help you avoid plagiarism. The following are general guidelines for note-taking. From them, develop a system that you can maintain and understand easily, whether that means using different colours, highlighters, or different symbols. Your system may evolve over time but try to keep it consistent for each project. If you change your system part way through, you may become more confused than ever!
- Keep a research log. Record what databases you used, what keywords you used to search, and the call numbers or URL’s of your sources. This will keep you from searching databases multiple times with the same keywords and will allow you to further refine your search without revisiting old ground.
- As soon as you have a source that you find useful, copy down complete bibliographic information. This will vary depending on the source and will be covered in later units but always includes at least author, title, and date. If you thoroughly record bibliographic information it will give you a head start on your Works Cited page.
- When you are taking notes, always record what source and what page the note was taken from. If you have many sources by the same author and/or with similar titles, developing a code system may help you keep them straight. In this case, make sure you keep a key to decode your system! Otherwise, simply the author’s last name or a key word from the title is sufficient.
- In your notes, indicate what is a direct quotation, what is paraphrasing, and what are your own ideas. A very simple system is to place quotation marks immediately around all quotations taken directly from the book, (para) before any paraphrasing, normal writing for summaries of material, and an asterisk to mark your own thoughts and speculations.
For instance, if you were researching the religious ethics of Martin Luther King Jr and used the system described above, your notes might look something like this:
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