Avoiding Plagiarism  

Plagiarism is the presentation of another’s words or ideas as if they were your own without giving credit to the other person, including but not limited to:

• Purchasing a paper on-line and submitting it as your own
• Copying your roommate’s paper (or parts of it) and submitting it as your own
• Paraphrasing ideas, data or writing from someone else’s work without properly acknowledging the original source
• Unauthorized transfer and use of another person’s computer file as your own

Source: UCLA Office of the Dean of Students’ Student Guide to Academic Integrity. Retrieved from http://www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/dos/assets/documents/StudentGuide.pdf.

You are expected to demonstrate integrity in all of your academic endeavors and plagiarism is a violation of that integrity.  There are different forms of academic dishonesty:

• Cheating: “I copied off of someone else’s exam.”
• Fabrication: “I made up the results for that lab exercise.”
• Plagiarism: “I didn’t write that part of my paper—I just cut and pasted the text directly from the Web.”
• Multiple Submissions: “I submitted the same paper for two of my classes.”
• Facilitating Academic Dishonesty: “I let my roommate copy my homework—it’s no big deal.”

Source: Dougherty, K., Lee, S. (2012). Avoiding plagiarism: A workshop on citation [PowerPoint slides]. 

Source: Swartz, P. (2012). "Oops, I plagiarized." Bruin Success with Less Stress. Retrieved from http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/col/bruinsuccess/03/01.cfm.

This guide was originally created by M. Jacobs. Other editors: D. Mizrachi.