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The Second-Level Writing Handbook // Creating and Implementing Effective Writing Assignments // Responding to Student Writing // In-Class Writing Activities // Peer Response // Preventing Plagiarism // OSU Resources.

Download Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The Writing Program Administrators' Statement on Best Practices as a Microsoft Word file.

Plagiarism has always concerned teachers and administrators, who want students' work to represent their own efforts and to reflect the outcomes of their learning. However, with the advent of the Internet and easy access to almost limitless written material on every conceivable topic, suspicion of student plagiarism has begun to affect teachers at all levels, at times diverting them from the work of developing students' writing, reading, and critical thinking abilities.

This statement responds to the growing educational concerns about plagiarism in four ways: by defining plagiarism; by suggesting some of its causes; by proposing a set of responsibilities (for students, teachers, and administrators) to address the problem; and by recommending a set of practices for teaching and learning that can significantly reduce its likelihood. The statement is intended to provide helpful suggestions and clarifications so that instructors, administrators, and students can work together more effectively in support of excellence in teaching and learning.

In instructional settings, plagiarism is a multifaceted and ethically complex problem.

• Definition: In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else's language, ideas, or other original material without acknowledging its source.

Most current discussions of plagiarism fail to distinguish between:

• submitting someone else's text as one's own or attempting to blur the line between one's own ideas or words and those borrowed from another source, and
• carelessly or inadequately citing ideas and words borrowed from another source.

Such discussions conflate plagiarism with the misuse of sources.

Ethical writers make every effort to acknowledge sources fully and appropriately in accordance with the contexts and genres of their writing. A student who attempts to identify and credit his or her source, but who misuses a specific citation format or incorrectly uses quotation marks or other forms of identifying material taken from other sources, has not plagiarized. Instead, such a student should be considered to have failed to cite and document sources appropriately.

What are the Causes of Plagiarism and the Failure to Use and Document Sources Appropriately?

Students who are fully aware that their actions constitute plagiarism are guilty of academic misconduct. Although no excuse will lessen the breach of ethical conduct that such behavior represents, understanding why students plagiarize can help teachers to consider how to reduce the opportunities for plagiarism in their classrooms.

Students are not guilty of plagiarism when they try in good faith to acknowledge others' work but fail to do so accurately or fully. These failures are largely the result of failures in prior teaching and learning: students lack the knowledge of and ability to use the conventions of authorial attribution. The following conditions and practices may result in texts that falsely appear to represent plagiarism as we have defined it:

• Students may not know how to integrate the ideas of others and document the sources of those ideas appropriately in their texts
• Students will make mistakes as they learn how to integrate others' words or ideas into their own work because error is a natural part of learning
• Students may not know how to take careful and fully documented notes during their research
• Students from other cultures may not be familiar with the conventions governing attribution and plagiarism in American colleges and universities

Students should understand research assignments as opportunities for genuine and rigorous inquiry and learning. Such an understanding involves:

• Assembling and analyzing a set of sources that they have determined are relevant to the issues they are investigating
• Acknowledging clearly when and how they are drawing on the ideas or phrasings of others
• Learning the conventions for citing documents and acknowledging sources appropriate to the field they are studying
• Consulting their instructors when they are unsure about how to acknowledge the contributions of others to their thought and writing

Faculty need to design contexts and assignments for learning that encourage students not simply to recycle information but to investigate and analyze its sources. This includes:

• Stating in writing their policies and expectations for documenting sources and avoiding plagiarism
• Teaching students the conventions for citing documents and acknowledging sources in their field
• Avoiding the use of recycled or formulaic assignments that may invite stock or plagiarized responses
• Engaging students in the process of writing
• Discussing problems students may encounter in documenting and analyzing sources, and offering strategies for avoiding or solving those problems
• Discussing papers suspected of plagiarism with the students who have turned them in, to determine if the papers are the result of a deliberate intent to deceive
• Reporting possible cases of plagiarism to appropriate administrators or review boards

Best Practices:

• Explain Plagiarism and Develop Clear Policies:
  • Talk about the underlying implications of plagiarism. Remind students that the goal of research is to engage scholarly discussion of issues.
  • Include in your syllabus a policy for using sources, and discuss it in your course. Define a policy that clearly explains the consequences of both plagiarism and the misuse or inaccurate citation of sources.
• Improve the Design and Sequence of Assignments:
  • Design assignments that require students to explore a subject in depth. Research questions and assignment topics should be based on principles of inquiry and on the genuine need to discover something about the topic, and should present that topic to an audience in the form of an exploration or an argument.
  • Start building possible topics early. Good writing reflects a thorough understanding of the topic being addressed or researched. Giving students time to explore their topics slowly and helping them to narrow their focus from broad ideas to specific research questions will personalize their research and provide evidence of their ongoing investigations
  • Support each step of the research process. Collecting interim materials helps break the research assignment down into elements of the research process while providing instructors with evidence of students' original work. Building "low-stakes" writing into the research process, such as reflective progress reports, allows instructors to coach students more effectively while monitoring their progress.
• Attend to Sources and the Use of Reading:
  • Ask students to draw on and document a variety of sources. Incorporating a variety of sources can help students develop ways of gathering, assessing, reading, and using different kinds of information.
  • Consider conventions. Appropriate use of citations depends on students' familiarity with the conventions of the genre(s) they are using for writing. Design activities that help students to become familiar with these conventions and make informed choices about when and where to employ them.
  • Show students how to evaluate their sources. Discuss with students how their sources will enable them to support their argument or document their research.
  • Focus on reading. Successful reading is as important to thoughtful research essays as is successful writing. Develop reading-related activities that will help students to read carefully and to think about how or whether to use that reading in their research projects.
• Work on Plagiarism Responsibly:
  • Distinguish between misuse of sources and plagiarism. If students have misused sources, they probably do not understand how to use them correctly. If this is the case, work with students so that they understand how to incorporate and cite sources correctly. Ask them to rewrite the sections where sources have been misused.
  • Ask students for documentation. If a student's work raises suspicions, talk with him or her about your concerns. Ask students to show you their in-process work (such as sources, summaries, and drafts) and walk you through their research process, describing how it led to the production of their draft.
  • Use plagiarism detection services cautiously. Although such services may be tempting, they are not always reliable.
• Take Appropriate Disciplinary Actions:
  • Pay attention to institutional guidelines. Many institutions have clearly defined procedures for pursuing claims of academic dishonesty. Be sure you have read and understood these before you take any action.
  • Consider your goal. If a student has plagiarized, consider what the student should take away from the experience. In some cases, a failing grade on the paper, a failure in the course, academic probation, or even expulsion might achieve those goals. In other cases, recreating the entire research process, from start to finish, might be equally effective.