PGDP Anti-Plagiarism Handout #1:
Is this plagiarism?
Text and some examples taken from http://www.csub.edu/ssricrem/howto/plagiarism.htm
This original text is the first sentence from a book review written by Lisa R. Staffen, published
in Contemporary Sociology (March, 1996, Vol. 25, No., 2, pp. 154-156).
"It has become fashionable to reject the notion of absolute objectivity on the
grounds that objectivity is simply unattainable or, even if attainable, is
undesirable."
Here is a correct way of paraphrasing and citing, with no plagiarism:
Quotation marks
Student version:
In her review of Porter's book, Lisa Staffen says the idea of absolute objectivity is
now commonly rejected as "simply unattainable or, even if attainable, [as]
undesirable" (Staffen, 1996, p. 154).
Citation
Are these plagiarism? Why or why not?
“Student” writes:
I feel it has become fashionable to reject
the notion of absolute objectivity on the
grounds that objectivity is simply
unattainable.
According to Lisa Staffen (1996), it has
become fashionable to reject the notion
of absolute objectivity on the grounds
that objectivity is simply unattainable.
I feel it has become stylish to reject the
idea of absolute objectivity on the
grounds that objectivity cannot be
achieved.
It has become stylish to reject the idea
of absolute objectivity on the grounds
that objectivity cannot be achieved
(Staffen, 1996).
Why is this plagiarism?
1. I feel it has become fashionable to reject the notion
of absolute objectivity on the grounds that
objectivity is simply unattainable.
This is obviously cheating. Word-for-word copying, and
pretending that it is his own words and opinion
2. According to Lisa Staffen (1996), it has become
fashionable to reject the notion of absolute
objectivity on the grounds that objectivity is
simply unattainable.
This is still cheating. The direct quote needs to be in
quotation marks; it is not his own words.
3. I feel it has become stylish to reject the idea of
absolute objectivity on the grounds that
objectivity cannot be achieved.
Again, still cheating: This is just “hiding” the fact that
the original way of writing this sentence came from
someone else. Changing a few words does not make it a
paraphrase.
4. It has become stylish to reject the idea of absolute
objectivity on the grounds that objectivity
cannot be achieved (Staffen, 1996).
This is still cheating. Again, it is hiding the fact that the
original way of writing the sentence came from
someone else. Even though there is a citation, it’s for
the idea only, and does not acknowledge the time and
effort that Staffen used to write the original sentence in
those particular words.
Note that these are examples of two types of plagiarism:
1. “Word-for-word” plagiarism (copy-and-paste)
2. Paraphrasing plagiarism (attempt at paraphrasing, but doesn’t get far enough away from
original; or it’s a good paraphrase, but the person whose idea it was is not cited)