What is Plagiarism?

Most college students are familiar with the concept of plagiarism, i.e. taking the ideas or expression of ideas (in any fixed form such as text, images, sound, video, and so forth) without proper attribution or citation. They know that plagiarism is "bad" and that they could get in serious trouble for plagiarizing another's work. But what does this mean?

To be blunt, plagiarism is the theft of ideas. It suffocates scholarship because new ideas do not grow from the assimilation of one's unique perspective and existing ideas. Theories, discoveries, experiments, and hypotheses are simply moved from one place to the next, shifted in time and space.

What if, for example, anesthesiologists just dragged old hypotheses into successive decades? We might still be breathing in the chloroform handkerchief and biting bullets during surgery. Suppose engineers took the ideas of previous generations and put them forth as new research, stolen and unchanged? We may all still be guiding the horse and buggy, cooking over open fires, and reading by candlelight, if that much.

Plagiarism is using or passing off someone else's work as your own, whether you have taken it verbatim (exactly) or whether you have paraphrased or manipulated it. While appropriating works or ideas from other people without attribution has always been wrong, the increasing amounts of information available on the Internet or through scanning make it an even greater temptation. Works of all kinds are easily found and copied. Many students are unaware that such activities constitute plagiarism or feel that it is unlikely that they will be caught. Either misconception can lead to serious academic repercussions.

Examples of Plagiarism:

Reproducing someone else's work without quotation marks and/or attribution
Paraphrasing or summarizing another's work without attribution
Failing to cite a source for ideas or information not commonly known
Failing to cite a source for ideas or information that is widely known
Using another student's work as your own

For more information on the basics of plagiarism, including specific examples, try the: University of British Columbia Biology Program Guide 2001/2002: Plagiarism and "Avoiding Plagiarism at Oregon State University".

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