Understanding Plagiarism

A serious and growing problem in higher education is the apparent lack of respect for intellectual property. Grabbing and using someone else's words, ideas, or work without giving full credit is wrong; it's also illegal. And yet, in our computer-based, cut-and-paste world, it's so much easier to do this and to get away with it for a while. Plagiarism does have several forms, and copying an author's use of language is not the only or the most common way that students engage in this practice. Still, when we catch students doing this, it's no wonder that parents, in particular, question the value of a college degree.

If students are caught lifting someone else's work, their ploys are soon discovered. The plagiarists face the immediate consequence of failing the very course in which they undertook the deceptive act. There is a wider, more serious consequence that may follow in some cases: expulsion from the academic institution for repeated offenses.

For academic integrity, it is vital that you understand how to give credit where it is due. This means that you're not just pulling from someone else's work and presenting it as your own, but instead are synthesizing information from a variety of sources, some of which you must cite directly and others of which you might paraphrase or summarize.

Citation Styles and Requirements

Proper citation practices are the bedrock of academic integrity, and they are especially important in the area of scholarly communication, where different disciplines favor specific citation styles. Among the styles used in the citation of scholarly works, the four most prominent are the American Psychological Association (APA), the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Chicago Manual of Style, and Harvard style. Each of these citation forms serves a particular academic community and has distinct, even idiosyncratic, rules for formatting citations and for the appearance of the work as a whole.

The American Psychological Association (APA) style, largely employed in the social and behavioral sciences, uses an author-date citation system. This format is double spaced and places great weight on the years of publication, denoting the fast pace of research in these disciplines. The Modern Language Association (MLA) style, predominantly used in the humanities and arts, favors parenthetical citations and maintains a Works Cited page. This style emphasizes authorship and integers, reflecting the kind of analysis that is common in literary studies.

There are two systems for documenting sources in The Chicago Manual of Style. One is the notes-bibliography system, which is especially good for the kind of detailed, almost narrative, source information that appears in some kinds of books and in certain academic disciplines, particularly those dealing with history, art, and literature. The other is the author-date system, now of great apparent simplicity, which almost no one ever uses exactly as the Manual presents it.

Citation styles exist to serve certain academic functions, and each has its own specific formatting that aids in the clarity and almost instantaneous recognition of a source. These forking paths in style, formatting, and function keep the academic world both honest and harmonious, and they also keep it functioning smoothly when scholars from different disciplines cross paths within the same paper or conference. Still, citation itself—as with any act of writing—can be an instance of maintaining the academic world's integrity while not always helping the professoriate to communicate with one another effortlessly.

Effective Citation Tools and Practices

How to manage citation in a digital age? Solved by advanced technology, of course. The problem once seemed Sisyphean. With the only means being manual, citations were either correctly managed or managed under duress. In come the digital citation gods—modern citation generators and reference management software—that promise and deliver (mostly) revolutionized pathways for not just organizing but also for storing and, when the time is right, for formatting (very mostly) academic citations. These reference management tools, like EndNote and Mendeley, offer gateways to "handle with ease" the citation damning through automatic generation of said damnable in various styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) as promised across the wide array of both digital and physical citation gods.

Usually, the software works with word processors, letting users add citations and create bibliographies without interrupting their flow. For many of us, citation was a tedious task. We did it because we had to, and some of us got pretty good at it. But we might have been better off, still, with citation tools that actually did what they were supposed to do: save us time and ensure that we produced error-free work. Indeed, any way to increase efficiency in academic productivity is a desirable outcome.

Prevention and Support Resources

A systematic, proactive method of defeating plagiarism exists. For a student to be truly free of the threat of plagiarism, they must not only be mindful of maintaining a detail-rich research log (including such pertinent information as the names of authors, the titles of works, and the dates of publication, for instance) but also be quite proficient at the art of paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is a fundamental skill that any good student writer must learn. A student who can readily and accurately paraphrase an author's ideas can also be sure they understand the author's ideas and is thus ready to build on that foundation with their own.

Campus Writing Support

The writing centers at universities provide essential support for students looking to enhance both their academic writing and their citation practices. These Centers typically offer one-on-one consultations with trained writing tutors who can review not just the content of papers but also the crucial framing that proper citation provides. Some writing centers have moved largely online, offering Zoom consultations with tutors that span the globe. All writing centers, whether in-person or online, provide access to a remarkably rich array of digital resources. Most universities have a virtual library system where students can find everything from citation management tools to real-time, 24/7 advice on any aspect of the citation process. Hearing this advice at the point of need is a critical factor in its effectiveness.

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