Today, we're going to be discussing avoiding plagiarism, or maintaining
academic integrity. I often feel a little funny talking about
avoiding plagiarism because I think it brings a punitive aspect to writing and
kind of criminalizes plagiarizers, and I prefer to think about writing as
something exciting, and interesting, and valuable, and meaningful.
And sometimes that can get lost in discussions of avoiding plagiarism,
so I really want to frame our conversation around those ideas.
I also prefer to approach this conversation by thinking about why
scholars engage with the work of others and why you do academic writing to begin
with. It's to advance knowledge, to move
thinking along, sometimes by revisiting what has already been published or thought
about, and sometimes by thinking about new ideas.
So for me, I think about why we cite others, so that other researchers can use
your research and your own ideas to move knowledge forward.
And that would mean why would we want to just repeat what someone else said
because they've already said it, right? So why don't we use what they've said in a
valuable way and then say what we want to say.
So still, avoiding plagiarism is important, and it also is culturally situated.
So, different places have different conventions around what it means to cite
and why you cite. In American academic writing in English,
for the purposes of this class, we have kind of a rule system in place.
And that rule system suggests that if you use the work of other people, you need to
attribute it and cite it, by saying Jones argues this, or Comer
suggest this. So plagiarism is stealing.
It's stealing the ideas of another person, or the language of another person.
So that's why it's really important if you paraphrase a specific moment in a text,
you still need to attribute it and cite it because you're taking the ideas.
And you can take and borrow and use, but you don't want to steal someone's ideas.
There are many different types of plagiarism.
This is not an exhaustive list, but one type would be purchasing a paper because
you're, well, you're not stealing because you're paying for it I guess, but [laugh]
you're stealing other people's work and presenting it as your own, right?
If you haven't written that paper, you're stealing others’ ideas.
Another form of plagiarism is misattributing a source, where you say
that Jones was the author of this idea, and actually it was Comer, right?
You want to make sure you're attributing sources correctly.
Another version is not attributing a source, so you can insert an idea in your
paper, and if you don't attribute it, then you're stealing.
And this is true even of your own prior work.
If you've written projects for other courses, and you want to
bring in the same idea, you need to cite, you know, major project 3 from your physics
class, on your references. And finally, the other form that we often
see is, patching together different sources without attributing.
So people will put together, you know, a couple sentences from Jones,
a couple sentences from Atkin, a couple sentences from Miller.
And then, suddenly, they have a paragraph, but it's all stolen.
Now, it wouldn't be stolen if you actually cite it, and so it's good to use other
people's work. Again, use other people's work in your
scholarship; however, just don't steal it, just attribute it.
Common reasons for plagiarism, I think the most common one is the lack of awareness.
It's not an excuse, it's still considered plagiarism, but many people just aren't
aware that they were supposed to attribute a source or cite a source in a particular
moment in your writing. So be aware of all the sources you're
using and the need and necessity for attributing those citations.
Another could be self-doubt, this is when you worry that maybe your writing isn't
going to be good enough, or your writing isn't good enough, and so let me just pull
from what someone else has to say because they're going to do it better.
This is kind of a self-fulfilling concern though because if you are already
doubting your own writing, and then you don't practice your writing
or get feedback on it, or try to strengthen it by honest self-reflection,
then you're not going to strengthen your writing.
Another reason for plagiarism occurs because of procrastination, because people
wait too long to do a project, and then they get kind of desperate or they're up
against a deadline. So try if you can to work on things as
they need to be worked on. And a final common reason is ambition.
[laugh] If you really want to get a good grade in something, or you really want make
your writing, make things happen for you in whatever you're doing,
you might plagiarize in order to kind of maximize those chances.
But again, if you really are an ambitious person, then likely what's
best for you in the long run is to actually work on strengthening your own
capacity for making things happen in your life.
See, that didn’t sound criminal, right? It sounds like plagiarism is very
uncomfortable to talk about, anyways. So how to avoid plagiarism, review why
scholars use evidence. Okay, go back and think about that video
that I did with the integrating evidence. Okay, it situates your project,
it lends credibility to your writing. You want to use the work of others in
academic writing, so go ahead and use the work of others,
and attribute it. Another way to avoid plagiarism is what we
did in the quickwrite videos. Where you did a quickwrite, and then I
asked you to go and locate page numbers, or in the discussion forums,
I asked you to use page numbers as you're working.
Keep track of page numbers throughout the writing process.
You may believe that you will never forget where in a particular text you found an
idea; however, after you're using enough ideas and it's been a long enough time,
you might accidentally forget, and then you'll be up against a deadline, and you'll
have to be searching through hundreds of different pages of text,
and you won't remember, and you'll feel frustrated,
so you'll say page 48, even though you actually don't see it on page 48,
and that's plagiarism because I as a scholar might come along and read your
article, and I might want to use that quote on page 48, but I'll go there, and it's not
there. You can also avoid plagiarism by starting
your writing projects in advance of the deadline, so you're not in that situation
where you procrastinated, and you're desperate, and you're worried.
