Avoiding Plagiarism: A Resource

Greetings again. I hope that all is going well.

As mentioned in the AuthorAID workshops, plagiarism (the use of others’ words or ideas without proper credit) is important to avoid in research writing.

However, avoiding plagiarism can pose challenges. Sometimes people aren’t sure what constitutes plagiarism. And sometimes people aren’t sure how to avoid it.

Recently a colleague mentioned a resource that can help in understanding—and thus avoiding—plagiarism. I’ve now included a link to it in the AuthorAID Resource Library. Let me introduce this resource.

This resource is a tutorial, titled “How to Recognize Plagiarism”, from the Indiana University School of Education. Among its components are the following:

• a definition of plagiarism
• guidance, including a flowchart, for avoiding plagiarism
• examples of source material, each followed by (1) a version of writing that is plagiarized and (2) a version that avoids plagiarism by citing the source and, if any material is used word for word, putting it in quotation marks or indenting it
• practice items, in which source material is provided and you can indicate which example of writing based on it is plagiarized and which one is not

The tutorial also includes a test in which one must read examples and indicate what kind of plagiarism, if any, has occurred. If you answer all 10 questions correctly, you can print out a certificate. (I did so!)

I encourage you to use this tutorial, and I hope you will recommend it to others.

Wishing you a good week! –Barbara