Helen C. Harton
Professor of Psychology
harton@uni.edu
Baker 357
Why do we care about proper
attribution of ideas?






It’s stealing
It’s lazy
It doesn’t make an original contribution
It doesn’t show understanding or
processing
It may be misleading to the reader—
making the literature seem stronger or
weaker than it is
It may even be illegal (copyright
infringement)
What is plagiarism?

“…plagiarism is defined as the process
of stealing or passing off as one’s own
the ideas or words of another, or
presenting as one’s own an idea or
product which is derived from an
existing source” (UNI Policies, Chapter
3, www.uni.edu/policies).
What are its consequences?
At a minimum, failing the paper
 Potentially being asked to leave your
program and/or the university
 Legal consequences

What products does it apply to?
Manuscripts submitted for publication
 Theses, dissertations, and research
papers
 Conference presentations
 Papers or presentations for class
 Thesis, dissertation, and research
proposals
 Take home tests
 Any other assignment or product

Plagiarism of text
Always use quotation marks and page
numbers for direct quotes
 Sometimes even using one word without
quotation marks can be plagiarism!
 Don’t just thesaurus in new words or
move things around

Plagiarism of ideas
Always give credit to others’ ideas
 If the idea for a project came from
somewhere else (discussion section of
another article, personal
communication), cite that as well
 If you’re collaborating, make
ownership/authorship clear early in the
process (but leave room for changes)

Self-plagiarism
Republishing a paper or just adding data
 Cutting a paper up and publishing small
parts
 Re-using your old text
 Double-dipping (turning in parts of the
same paper for more than one
class/project)

How can I avoid plagiarism?
Intention doesn’t matter
Don’t just have strings of quotes
Read, then pause before writing
Make sure you understand what you’ve
read
 Make notes on the article






More important, more extreme
Outline your article and then fill in

More important attitudes are more extreme.
○ College students and elementary school children on school proposals
(Harton & Latane, 1998)
○ When judging others (Justin, 2000)
○ Believe others will do too (McConahay & Costa, 2004)
Other unethical writing practices
Citing something you haven’t read or
have only read the abstract of
 Citing secondary sources
 Selective reporting of literature
 Selective reporting of method or results
 Submitting things without co-author
approval

Who owns the data/product?
Professor
 Student
 Agency/Sponsor

Who should be an author?

Substantial contributions
 YES—Forming hypotheses or theses,
designing the study, conducting or
interpreting the results, writing the paper
 NO—Collecting or entering data, recruiting
participants, suggesting analyses or sources
 But it depends

In order of contribution
When you have doubts or
questions…
ASK!
 Look at guidelines in your discipline
 Resources will be posted with these
Powerpoints
