Essentially, plagiarism is a form of cheating that involves submitting or presenting work in a course as if it were the student's own, done expressly for the particular course when, in fact, it is not. Most commonly, plagiarism exists when:
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the work submitted or presented was done, in whole or in part, by an individual other than the one submitting or presenting the work (this includes having another person impersonate the student or otherwise substituting the work of another for one's own in an examination or test)
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parts of the work are taken from another source without reference to the original author
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the whole work is copied from another source AND/OR
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a student submits or presents work in one course that has also been submitted in another course (even though it may be entirely the work of that student) without the express consent of the instructors in the courses concerned
While it is recognized that scholarly work often involves reference to the ideas, data, and conclusions of other scholars, intellectual honesty requires that such references be explicitly and clearly noted. Plagiarism is an extremely serious academic offence.
The elementary rules of quotation and paraphrase are given below. There are further details and conventions of punctuation that you may need to look up in a manual of style, but observance of these rules should assure compliance with contemporary standards of intellectual honesty.
1. If you use more than four words from any source, put them in quotation marks and identify the source with a reference.
EXAMPLE:
It has been observed that "many tribes are, in a sense, ethnographic fictions" (Leach 1954: 291).
2. If your direct quotation is more than three lines long, put it in block form; that is, left- and right-indented and single-spaced, without quotation marks and with a reference.
EXAMPLE:
Malinowski thought of tribes as social systems with well defined boundaries. This conception of tribe was later to be challenged by one of his students, who observed that:
the ethnographer has often only managed to discern the existence of "a tribe" because he took it as axiomatic the this kind of cultural entity must exist (Leach 1954: 291).
3. To paraphrase the work of another means to present the same train of thought and evidence, but rephrased into your own words. Whenever you do this, you must include a note or reference to the source. A common mistake is to break up an author's words and rearrange them slightly, passing them off as your own. This is wrong, even if you include a note or reference to the source. To do this for more than a few words is to commit plagiarism.
EXAMPLE:
Below are three passages. The first is an excerpt from E.A. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma. The second is an improper paraphrase of the passage that would be considered plagiarism. The third is a proper paraphrase.
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It is largely an academic fiction to suppose that in a "normal" ethnographic situation one ordinarily finds distinct "tribes" distributed on the map in an orderly fashion with clear-cut boundaries between them. I agree of course that ethnographic monographs frequently suggest that this is the case, but are the facts provided? My own view is that the ethnographer has often only managed to discern the existence of a "tribe" because he took it as axiomatic that this kind of cultural entity must exist. Many such tribes are, in a sense, ethnographic fictions (Leach 1954: 290-291). (SOURCE)
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It is an academic misconception to think that in a typical ethnographic situation tribes with clear-cut boundaries can be found distributed in an orderly fashion on the map. Ethnographic monographs often imply that this is so, but what are the facts? The ethnographer is often able to find a "tribe" only because she takes it for granted that this kind of group must exist. Many tribes are figments of the anthropologist's imagination. (PLAGIARISM)
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Ethnographic monographs often suggest that it is normally the case that there exist in the real world contiguous tribes with clearly discernable boundaries; however, it is Leach's view that such units are found only because the ethnographer has taken their existence for granted (Leach 1954: 290-291). (PROPER PARAPHRASE)
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