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Academic Integrity and Plagiarism: Home

Important

Be aware that different disciplines, cultures, and individuals have different accepted ways of presenting and acknowledging sources for information. This guide is meant to be a starting point and a general guide. Please check with your individual course instructor if you have any doubts about plagiarism. 

What is Plagiarism?

"The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own; literary theft."

Plagiarism in the News

Headlines compiled by Google News

Plagiarism Guide

Word cloud for citations

This guide will introduce students to the concept of plagiarism, strategies for avoiding it, ISU policy on plagiarism, and citing sources.

Examples of Plagiarism

If you do not cite the source, whether it's just a few words or whole paragraphs--the following all constitute plagiarism:

  • Any form of "copying & pasting" without citing.

  • Copying from a website, such as Wikipedia.

  • Copying from an article in a magazine, journal, or newspaper.

  • Copying from a book.

  • Copying someone else's work.

  • Rewording (paraphrasing) a source, or someone else's work, without citing it.

  • Failing to place quotation marks around a direct quote.

  • Fabricating citations or providing incorrect references.

  • Buying an essay online and turning it in as your own.

  • Using a previously written essay from one class in another class.

Avoiding Plagiarism Flowchart

Plagiarism Video

A Quick Guide to Plagiarism, via YouTube. Video created by Cape Fear Community College.

License

The ISU Library would like to thank Sharon Hamilton of the Murphy Library at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse for allowing us to edit and use the excellent Plagiarism guide to create this guide.  There are elements from the UW-Green Bay Plagiarism LibGuide. in this guide, as well as elements from the Teaching and Learning with Technology Department at Penn State University and School of Education at Indiana University, used with permission.

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