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Library Research Guides

Earth 142: From Stars to Stones

Covers: differences between refereed, scientific literature and other information sources; the process of searching for scientific, scholarly literature; the value of academic integrity and tools to avoid unintended plagiarism.

Why Should I Care About Academic Integrity?

  • To give credit where credit is due
  • To further scholarship
  • To protect your academic standing and scholarly reputation
  • To prepare for personal and professional challenges
  • To enjoy hard-earned knowledge, confidence, and ability and know that your accomplishments have been achieved ethically and without unfair advantage.

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is representing someone else’s ideas, words, statements, or other work as one’s own without proper acknowledgment or citation. Plagiarism can happen intentionally or unintentionally so it's good to know how to recognize what constitutes plagiarism. Some examples of plagiarism include:

  • Copying word for word or lifting phrases or a special term from a source or reference, whether oral, printed, or on the internet, without proper attribution.
  • Paraphrasing, that is, using another person’s written words or ideas, albeit in one’s own words, as if they were one’s own thought.
  • Borrowing facts, statistics, graphs, or other illustrative material without proper reference, unless the information is common knowledge, in common public use.

* Examples listed here were originally listed on the LS&A webpage about Academic Integrity which can be found here.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

The key to avoiding plagiarism is give credit where credit is due. Some ways to not plagiarize include:

  • Take good notes as you read. Note the author and page number of where you read ideas and/or facts.
  • Create a good system of organizing your research notes. Make time to provide citations in your paper.
  • Make sure to use in-text citations to give authors credit for their ideas.
  • Not sure if something is common knowledge and doesn't need a citation? Ask your professor, GSI, or a librarian.
  • Test your ability to recognize plagiarism with the tools below

How to Give Credit to Other Researchers

One of the most important parts of the research process is giving other scholars credit for their work. The primary way to do this is to provide a citation (list the name of the author, year the item was published, name of the item, etc.) to the work you're using. You can find more information about using citations by going to the research guide about Citation Help and geting help using Various Citation Programs. 

How to Give Credit to Other Students

Here are ways to avoid using someone's elses ideas:

  • When talking about your project or paper with others keep track of what is your idea and what is their idea.
  • Don't intentially ask others to do your work.
  • Don't assume an assigment is collaborative. If unsure, ask your instructor to clarify.

Citing Sources

Citing Sources: Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

 

Why Does it Matter?

Providing citations of the sources you use for your research shows good academic integrity.
A thorough list of sources shows that you are:

  • engaging with the scholarly research community by allowing other researchers to see and track down your sources.
  • using information from reputable sources to form the basis of your argument or research claims.
  • using the information ethically by acknowledging the research that has laid the groundwork for your research.

Crediting sources is done in a standardized form called a citation style. There are many styles from which to choose.