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. If you ever find yourself in a position where you cannot finish a writing project, I would recommend you ask for a deadline extension. This might or might not work. The person might say yes, and he or she might say no, but at least you can ask. The very best way to avoid plagiarism is to care about your writing. Spend time writing drafts, getting feedback, revising your work to strengthen your writing because then you'll much less inclined to take a shortcut and use the other work of people without attributing it. You'll also be less inclined to not ask questions. If you care about something, and you want to do the best version of it that you can, then probably you're going to ask questions. And so if you ever don't know whether something is or isn't plagiarism, just ask somebody; find somebody who you think will know, or enough people that you imagine you can kind of collectively gather a sense of it, and in this class you can ask on the forum, and I'm sure many of your colleagues will share their ideas. I would encourage you to err on the side of being very scrupulous with citation, rather than less scrupulous. It's much better to have too much citation than not enough, so go ahead and err on that side. But even outside of the class, questions will come up. Go ahead and find somebody or a group of people that you can ask. I have questions sometimes too, and I've been doing this for a lot of years. So, avoid plagiarism, maintain academic integrity, care about your own writing, and remember what academic writing is about in terms of engaging with the work of others, why you want to advance knowledge rather than just keep repeating what other people have said.
