Understanding Plagiarism

This page was originally written in 2008. Some of the information may be outdated. While most suggestions would be still valid, I cannot vouch for every suggestion here. Please use your own judgment.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the practice of claiming, or implying, original authorship or incorporating material from someone else’s written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one’s own without adequate acknowledgement.

The above sentence is an example of plagiarism! I took this definition from Wikipedia’s page on plagiarism.

Plagiarism.org contains wealth of information for students and teachers on what constitutes plagiarism and how to prevent it.

How to avoid plagiarism?

You have plagiarized if you pass off someone else’s work as your own. You can claim credit only for your own ideas and not someone else’s. If you use their ideas, you have to cite the source. Simply put, plagiarism is avoided by appropriately citing your sources.

Does that mean that it is not plagiarism in the above example because I cited Wikipedia, the original source of that quote?

Well, not yet! Had I paraphrased the above quote in my own words, then citing the Wikipedia source would suffice. I have picked up that quote verbatim. Therefore, the quote has to be enclosed within quotation marks (i.e.: ” “).

The only place that does not require citation is if the thing you are discussing is common knowledge in that community. For example, you don’t have to cite Newton while talking about gravity, nor do you have to cite vant Hoff or Arrhenius before using the Arrhenius equation for computing rate of reactions.

One of the ways plagiarism enters students’ work is when we aren’t adequately vigilant. This happens early in the students’ career, where they are not confident, are yet to develop writing skills and feel that the written word (in journal articles or books) is better-written than theirs. It is no surprize that the latter is usually better-written, since it has undergone multiple rounds of revisions. But one needs to be extra vigilant. Never copy-paste or jot down anything verbatim; always express everything in your own words (with citation to the original source), even when writing in your “rough-work book”.

Plagiarism is a Big Deal

Plagiarism is a serious ethical violation and is taken extremely seriously in the scientific community. Plagiarism therefore has serious consequences. I know of several instances of students kicked out of a university for plagiarizing their technical reports for course-work. There have been documented cases of researchers barred from publishing in certain journals and tenured faculty losing their jobs due to plagiarism.

More Resources on Plagiarism

Here is a list of resources you can read to understand more about plagiarism:

  • www.plagiarism.org provides a wealth of information for students and faculty on plagiarism and ways to avoid it. They identify the following acts as plagirism; quote:
    • turning in someone else’s work as your own
    • copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
    • failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
    • giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
    • changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
    • copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not
  • Janet Stemwedel writes about ways to deal with plagiarism.
  • Dr. Arunn Narasimhan has a detailed article on Plagiarism and the publish-or-perish mantra
  • (Update: 17-Feb-2023) IIT Madras has subscription to Turn-It-In for checking plagiarism.