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For Faculty: Academic integrity and plagiarism

Resources for Castleton University faculty for use of the library, incorporating information literacy into courses, sources for curriculum materials and more

Plagiarism 2.0: Information Ethics in the Digital Age

Film from Films on Demand.  Click on image to access. Subscription resource, log-in required.

"For a generation raised on the ideology of "open source" and the ability to quickly cut and paste, the concept of plagiarism may seem foreign or passé. And that, of course, can lead to trouble. This video examines the behaviors that constitute plagiarism, their consequences, and the best ways to avoid them. Showing how accidental copying as well as willful plagiarism can occur, the program lays out the dangers of cheating, then illustrates the pitfalls of non-attribution and patch writing while showing how to properly attribute and paraphrase a lengthy quotation. Copyright, trademark, and intellectual property concepts are...discussed."

Resources on plagiarism

Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism

Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers
An article with advice for faculty from Robert Harris, the author of The Plagiarism Handbook. "Strategies of awareness," "strategies of prevention" and "strategies of detection."

Copyright

Also see the resources on the Copyright tab of this guide.

Helpful books

Keep calm

Keep calm and cite your sources

Image credit: Simon Fraser University under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 (BY-NC)

Featured resources to use with students

Recommended resources to share with students

How to Recognize Plagiarism from Indiana University, including examples and practice exercises identifying plagiarized passages and quizzes

Plagiarism Tutorial from the University of Southern Mississippi

The Nuts and Bolts of Integrating Sources into your writing, from the Harvard Guide to Using Sources, includes these sections:

Topic Sentences  |  Framing Source Material  |  Signal Phrases  

Quoting and Grammatical Sentences  |  Ellipses  |  Block Quotations  |  Using Sic


Quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing

There are many instances of plagiarism that are purposeful and clearly a form of cheating.  However, failing to carefully cite other people's ideas and language in the body of your writing can also be considered plagiarism.  It is important to learn to skillfully give credit to your sources in the body of your writing.  These are the three main ways other people's ideas can be incorporated in your writing and given credit with an in-text citation or a footnote.

A brief explanation of quoting, paraphrasing and summarizing with examples


Quoting
When you use someone else's language word for word, you indicate this in a quotation.  You must attribute the quote to the original source.

Summarizing
Summarizing is putting the main ideas of a source in your own wordsSummarized ideas must also be attributed to the original source. 

Paraphrasing
Putting a passage from a source into your own words is paraphrasing. This also must be attributed to the original source.

Online multimedia tutorials on plagiarism

Interactive games/tutorials/quizzes for teaching about plagiarism

How To Avoid Plagiarism Tutorial from the University of Maryland.

Plagiarism Tutorial from the University of Maine

Plagiarism Tutorial from Simon Fraser University

Plagiarism.org from Turnitin.com

Goblin Threat. A game-based tutorial on plagiarism. (Find the goblins in the room to get to quiz questions about plagiarism)

Plagiarism tutorial and quizzes from University of Technology Sydney

Background reading

Castleton's Academic Honesty Policy in the University Catalog

Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices from the Council of Writing Program Administrators

CQ Researcher did a report in 2013:  Plagiarism and Cheating (Subscription resource.  Log-in required for off-campus access.)

A Plagiarism Carol

Amusing, if not terribly informative, video about plagiarism.  In Norwegian with subtitles. Amazing production values!