Plagiarism is defined as utilizing someone else’s work without properly crediting them. Plagiarism in academic writing is defined as taking words, ideas, or information from a source without proper citation. In practice, this might entail a variety of things.
- Without quotation marks, copying sections of a text ‘word for word’ gives the impression that these are your own words.
- Without crediting the source, paraphrasing a text by changing a few words or modifying the sentence structure gives the impression that you came up with the concept, while in reality you simply rephrased someone else’s.
- Giving misleading information about a source does not let readers verify the content as they cannot locate the specified source.
- Quoting from a source so extensively that it constitutes the majority of your text means that you are not producing an original contribution.
- Reusing work from a prior assignment without properly attributing oneself is not acceptable. Even if it is original work, the readers should be made aware that it is not entirely new and is based on earlier research.
- Submitting a text fully written by someone else (e.g., a paper you bought from a ghostwriter) is simply unethical.
