The Honors Seminar Series Guide to
Avoiding Plagiarism
In all your writing, and in oral presentations too, it is essential that you acknowledge the ideas of others upon whom your own thinking depends—including ideas obtained from such non-written sources as lectures, interviews, class discussions, and even casual conversations with colleagues and friends. Give credit for ideas that are not your own as well as for passages of text that you summarize, paraphrase, or quote.
Why Do You Need to Cite the Sources of Your Ideas?
If material possessions are the property of our community at large, thoughts and ideas — expressed in speech or writing — constitute the “intellectual property” of our academic community. To take another’s words or ideas and present them as your own is to commit plagiarism, an act of academic theft, and the punishments can be severe (cf. University of Massachusetts Amherst Academic Regulations, “Academic Honesty”). On the other hand, to cite your sources properly is to acknowledge the intellectual ownership of others; proper citation affords you permission to use others’ work as a foundation for your own.
Adequate source citation is therefore a matter of academic honesty. It is not only a matter of honesty, however. Thorough citation, or "documentation," allows your reader fuller entry into your own thought process by answering four essential questions:
• Who influenced your thinking on a given subject?
• What precisely did these other thinkers say about your subject?
• Where did you find their thoughts and observations?
• Where can your reader find the full expression of these thoughts and observations in order to pursue them further?
What Do You Need to Cite?
Submitting another person's entire paper as one’s own is a clear act of plagiarism. Inserting verbatim portions of another’s work into one’s own text without acknowledgement is plagiarism as well.
But the need for proper citation extends still further to encompass any information, argument, line of reasoning, or theory written or spoken by another—whether you
• quote it directly,
• summarize it succinctly, or
• paraphrase it in your own words.
You must carefully document and cite sources of borrowed material appearing in all three forms.
What Don't You Need to Cite?
Other than your own unique observations and interpretations, what information does not need to be documented? Common adages are free use, though usually to be avoided as clichés (e.g. “Don’t cry over spilt milk”; “You can’t judge a book by its cover”). Commonly known facts are free use, too (“Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford’s Theatre”; “The Caspian Sea is bordered on the south by Iran”). As a rule of thumb, facts that you find undocumented in three or more sources do not require your documentation. A safer rule to follow: When in doubt, cite your source.
How Do You Cite Your Sources?
Various disciplines rely on various citation styles. Writers in the arts and humanities usually follow the forms of the Modern Language Association (MLA); social scientists typically adhere to the American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines; many writers in the natural sciences as well as mathematics follow the Council of Science Editors (formerly the Council of Biology Editors or CBE) style. Historians traditionally follow a fourth guide, The Chicago Manual of Style, often referred to as “Turabian” for Kate Turabian, dissertation secretary at the University of Chicago from 1930 to 1958. Some book and journal editors produce their own individual style guides as well.
For consistency's sake, we ask all students taking the Commonwealth College Reading & Research Seminar to follow MLA style guidelines. For more MLA citation information, see see our Source Citation & Documentation guide.
Copyright and Fair Use
You are allowed to incorporate portions of other people's work—including words, sounds and images—into your own because your course work falls within the boundaries of a legal doctrine termed "fair use." Your course work, in other words, is characterized by these factors:
- Its purpose is educational and not commercial;
- It is part of a class assignment;
- It is presented privately (that is, in the classroom to your instructor and peers), not publicly;
- It contains a small portion of the other person's work and is properly cited.
Note: The fair use doctrine applies to all work protected by copyright, whether printed or electronic, whether written or graphic. As a general rule, you should assume the work of others to be protected unless clearly stipulated to the contrary.
Also note: A website is public and therefore does not fall within the boundaries of fair use. If you are using a website to present to your instructor and colleagues course work containing others' words, images or music, limit access to your site to class members through WebCT or password protection.
Copyright law, including the fair use doctrine, is complex and in many instances loosely defined. As members of an educational institution, we enjoy benefits of fair use that others in the private and commercial worlds do not. Therefore it falls to us to use our privileges responsibly.
For more information on copyright and fair use, visit these sites:
- Amherst College - The Digital Millennium Copyright Act at neighboring Amherst College offers a clear Ten Steps to Understanding Copyright along with an easily understood set of Fair Use and Education Copying Guidelines for faculty and students.
- Standford University Libraries - Here's a comprehensive yet easily navigated online guide to Copyright & Fair Use. Along with a detailed overview of the laws, the site also contains links to primary legal materials, use policies of dozens of colleges and universities, and other important copyright sites.
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