The Portable Editor
Volume 7, No. 7
UNC’s Honor Code defines plagiarism as the “deliberate or reckless
representation of another’s words, thoughts, or ideas as one’s own without attribution in
connection with submission of academic work, whether graded or otherwise.” More
simply put, the act of plagiarism involves accepting credit—whether intentionally or
accidentally—for work that you did not originally create or for thoughts or statements
that you did not originally think or say.
Why Plagiarism is Wrong
Plagiarism is unethical, which should be a major concern for anyone preparing for a
social work career. Even if plagiarism is undetected, by committing plagiarism you hurt
both the School of Social Work as a learning community and yourself as a social work
professional:
• You deny yourself the opportunity to learn and practice skills that might be
critical in your future practice and career;
• You deny yourself the opportunity to improve your skills and performance by
receiving feedback on your work and your process of putting ideas together;
• You open the door for colleagues and employers to question your integrity, your
honesty, and your ethics; once opened, that door never closes;
• You defraud the faculty who are evaluating your work; submitting work that is
not 100% your own wastes the time and effort that faculty give to providing
feedback to help prepare you for practice;
• You deprive the original authors of the credit due them for their work;
• You show a lack of respect for your peers who have put in the time and effort
required to do their own work; and
• You endanger the clients you work with because taking the intellectual shortcut of
plagiarism might allow you to slip through the program with an imperfect or
inadequate understanding of treatments, theories, and concepts critical to social
work practice with vulnerable populations.i
Why Your Instructors Want You to Understand Plagiarism
There’s no denying that the MSW program is writing intensive, leaving some students to
question why many written assignments require them to painstakingly explain the basics
that have been covered in the course readings and have been discussed in their class. The
objective of these assignments is to provide each student with the opportunity to
demonstrate mastery of the topic. In other words, your goal in your written work is to
demonstrate that you not only comprehend the subject matter but that you can critically
think about the issues and offer new ideas to advance what is known about the topic.
For example, your instructors might want to see that you know how to accurately define
and explain Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. However, where possible, they
also want to see that you are capable of applying that theory and offering a new
perspective on an issue, such as how growing up in poverty might affect a child’s
physical development or academic achievement.
But here’s the key: With proper citation, your instructor, as well as other readers, can
better determine which information you are presenting is attributable to another author,
such as Bronfenbrenner, and which thoughts and perspectives are yours. Proper citation
also helps readers to search for additional sources on a topic.
What plagiarism looks like:
The best way to avoid plagiarism is to learn everything you can about it, including the
common pitfalls and mistakes that lead to unintentional plagiarism. Fortunately, there are
some great resources available such as plagiarism.org and this plagiarism tutorial site
from librarians at UNC, Duke, NCSU and NCCU.
Generally, you can identify plagiarism in writing if the author did any or all of the
following:
• Copied another’s work word-for-word without crediting the source of the original
material.
• Copied and pasted some material from a source, changed a few words here or
there but failed to give proper attribution to the original author of the material.
• Placed quote marks around another individual’s words without citing the actual
name of the author of the original material.
• Paraphrased most of the material for a paper and did not properly cite the
author(s) of the information paraphrased.
What plagiarism does NOT look like:
Recognizing what does NOT need documentation or attribution is just as important as
understanding proper citation. Information that is considered “common knowledge”
never needs citation. This information generally includes material that is accepted as fact
such as: President Obama is our nation’s 44th President and UNC sports teams, students,
and even North Carolina residents are often referred to by the “tar heel” nickname.
UNC’s Writing Center notes that a good rule of thumb for determining whether
information is common knowledge is to ask the following:
• “Did I know this information before I took this course?”
• “Did this information/idea come from my own brain?”
According to a UNC Writing Center handout on plagiarism: “If you answer ‘no’ to either
or both of these questions, then the information is not ‘common knowledge’ to
you.[emphasis added] In these cases, you need to cite your source(s) and indicate where
you first learned this bit of what may be ‘common knowledge’ in the field.”
However, do not confuse your expertise in a specific professional field to be common
knowledge among all. For example, just because you and your fellow social work
students may know that, “professional social workers are the nation’s largest providers of
mental health services,” does not mean that same information is well known to a broader
audience. In this case, citing a source, such as the National Association of Social Workers
Center for Workforce Studies, which is quoted above, is a must.
Preventing plagiarism: A checklist
Completing your writing assignments require LOTS of planning, and proper planning and
budgeting your time will lessen your risk of plagiarizing, especially unintentional
plagiarism that occurs because of sloppy note taking or rushed, last-minute writing. The
following are good tips from plagiarism.org:
• Be intentional about how you use your sources. Find a good balance between your
own original ideas and the ideas of other authors.
• Create an outline or define a thesis statement that clearly forms an argument about
the information you find. Doing so will help you distinguish between your ideas
and those of your sources.
• Take good notes! Again, doing so will ensure that you are clear about which
information you plan to include in your paper is attributable to you and which
must be credited to another source. “Poor note-taking can lead to many
problems—including improper citations and misquotations, both of which are
forms of plagiarism.”
• Recording reference information immediately for sources you intend to cite, even
in the margins of your notes, is a great way to avoid a last-minute scramble for
citation information when you’re trying to finish your paper.
• Be a better paraphraser. “A paraphrase is a restatement in your own words of
someone else's ideas. Changing a few words of the original sentences does not
make your writing a legitimate paraphrase. You must change both the words and
the sentence structure of the original, without changing the content.” Knowing
how to properly paraphrase will not only help you to avoid plagiarism but
demonstrate to instructors that you can think critically about the material you are
learning. Not to mention, your instructor wants to hear your voice in your writing
and not the authors you are reading. But remember, even if you present another
author’s ideas in your own words, you must cite the original author.
Finally, talk to your instructors, a university librarian, or one of the academic editors at
the School of Social Work if you have any concerns about what to cite or questions on
plagiarism in general. They can also point you to other resources that may assist you.
And when in doubt – CITE! It is always best to attribute material to another source.
Ultimately, citations strengthen your writing and provide valuable resources for others
interested in the topic(s) you are writing about.
Sources: UNC Writing Center and plagarism.org i Adapted from a handout from the University of Pennsylvania