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Inside.Waldenu.Edu>Writing Center>Plagiarism Prevention>Plagarism Prevention Student Resources>What is Plagiarism?
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What is Plagiarism? At its simplest, plagiarism is representing someone else's intellectual property as your own. For students at Walden, you are most commonly at risk of plagiarizing when you fail to adequately cite the original source material from which you took words and ideas. As you will see below, the integrity of your work is also compromised when you rely to heavily on secondary sources and direct quotes.
Walden University Policy on Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty No student shall claim credit for another's work or accomplishments or use another's ideas in a written paper or presentation without appropriate attribution through citations and references. The consequences of plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty can include nonacceptance of work submitted, a grade of "NC" (No Credit) or "F" (Unsatisfactory) for the course in which the violation occurs, written reprimands posted to the student's file, and suspension or dismissal from the University.
Walden University requires students to adhere to specific standards for academic quality and integrity. The following sections outline these standards and the related policies and procedures. Walden University regards academic honesty to be essential to the entire academic enterprise. The University defines violations of this policy to include plagiarism, academic dishonesty, and misrepresentation. Such violations will not be tolerated.
Students are advised that Walden University subscribes to the "Ethics of Scientific Publication"of the American Psychological Association, as found in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (4th ed.).
Statements made and documents supplied by Walden applicants and students must be complete and accurate. Walden University will not tolerate any misrepresentation by a student or applicant of past or current academic programs, degrees, or professional accomplishments. If unexplained discrepancies appear between statements or documents provided to Walden University and information obtained otherwise, save in the case of misspellings and other such inadvertencies, applicants may be rejected for admission and students may be dismissed. Standards for Written Curriculum Components Walden University expects the submitted work of students to reflect the standards of the scholarly community, adhere to American Psychological Association or Turabian format guidelines, and be written in fair and accurate language.
APA and Turabian Guidelines Walden University requires the written work of students to adhere to the format and style guidelines established by the American Psychological Association (APA). These guidelines are published in the following reference manual:
American Psychological Association (1994). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Alternatively, students may follow Turabian guidelines, except in psychology programs.
Turabian, K. L. (1996). A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertations (6th ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fair and Accurate Language Because Walden is committed to the fair treatment of all individuals and groups, the University recommends that faculty, students, and administrators write and speak in a manner that respects human beings, regardless of gender, race, ethnic origins, religious preference, or sexual orientation. Students seeking more information on this topic may wish to consult the American Psychological Association's Publication Manual for reduction of bias in language.
Unless they are in the public domain, it is illegal to reproduce copyrighted materials without permission of the copyright holder. Walden University rigorously adheres to copyright laws, requesting and/or purchasing proprietary permission to duplicate materials for classroom use. The fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2001) indicates you should use quotation marks and a page reference (or paragraph reference in electronic documents) to show you are using the exact words of another writer. You must also cite an author each time you paraphrase, and a page reference is encouraged with paraphrases, as well.
A useful explication of paraphrasing appears in The Craft of Research (University of Chicago Press, 1995) by Booth, Colomb, and Williams: You plagiarize even when you do credit the author but use his exact words without so indicating with quotation marks or block indentation. You also plagiarize when you use words so close to those in your source, that if your work were placed next to the source, it would be obvious that you could not have written what you did without the source at your elbow. (p. 167). In other words, paraphrasing doesn’t mean changing a single word or two in a few sentences. Paraphrasing means putting an idea into your own words.
In the following examples, notice the difference in the three attempts at paraphrasing. In attempt 1, no credit is given to the original authors at all. In attempt 2, a citation appears at the end of the paragraph—but nearly all the words and sentences flow one after another as in the original. In attempt 3, the student successfully rewrote the essence of the original in his own words.
Two Other Problems Related to Integrity 1. You must not suggest to your reader that you have read something you haven’t. Students make this mistake when incorrectly citing secondary sources. Examine, for example, this paragraph, written by Father Flannigan (1997):
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