“Plagiarism is using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information” (Writing Tutorial Services, 2004). Notice that it does not matter whether or not the failure to give credit is intentional. Any lack of credit, even accidental, is considered plagiarism.

At Cal State San Marcos, the General Catalog (2001) defines plagiarism as:

1. not giving proper credit for ideas, words, or “specific substance of another’s work,” (P-5)

2. claiming authorship on a group project without actually doing the work,

3. claiming someone else’s artistic or scholarly work as your own.

Any form of information requires acknowledgement. A common perception is that only the exact copying of words from a printed publication constitutes plagiarism. The requirement to acknowledge sources is much broader. In particular, it is important to understand that the source of  ideas — opinions, theories, facts, etc. — as well as words must be credited..

Sources of words and ideas come in many forms, all of which require proper attribution to avoid plagiarism. This web site focuses on plagiarism as it appears in student papers using written sources but the concepts can be applied to any type of source material. Information sources can include:

• spoken words such as conversations and interviews,

• written words including email and web pages as well as published and print materials,

• multimedia such as movies, music and photographs, and

• any other way to express an idea including statistics, drawings, graphs, maps, etc.

California State University San Marcos General Catalog. (2001). California State University San Marcos: San Marcos, CA.

Writing Tutorial Services, Indiana University. (2004, April 27). Plagiarism: What It Is and How to Recognize and Avoid It. Retrieved February 5, 2008, from  http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml
 

Citations in the What is Plagiarism? section use APA style.