Avoiding Plagiarism

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Avoiding Plagiarism

• A guide for assignments
• written for Biology 100L
• UMBC Department of Biological Sciences

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Outline

• Why we care.
• Why you should care
• Whats plagiarism?
• How to avoid plagiarism
• How do I give credit?
• What NOT to cite
• Common misconceptions and FAQs

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Why we care.
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Why do scholars care so much about citations?

• Citations help us judge the reliability of a
  piece of information.
• Citations help us find information thats not
  indexed.
• Not giving a scholar credit for his/her work robs
  them of the recognition for their work that they
  have earned.

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Whats the big deal about plagiarism?

• A university is a community of academic or
  scholars. Like many professions, scholars have
  their own culture. A feature of human cultures
  is that they have sets of values that govern the
  way people conduct themselves.
• Plagiarism violates the cultural norms of
  academia.

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Why you should care
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Plagiarism Penalties

• Some of the penalties given to plagiarizing
  students in the past are
• Refusal to accept a paper until it is
  plagiarism-free, resulting in late penalties
  AND/OR
• Loss of credit for the assignment AND/OR
• An additional plagiarism penalty of 5-30 off
  the top of your end-of-semester grade, AND/OR
• A Notice of Academic Misconduct filed with the
  Provosts office or the UMBC Academic Conduct
  Committee, AND/OR
• An automatic F in the course.

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UMBC Rules

• At UMBC, before arriving at a penalty for an
  incidence of plagiarism, instructors are required
  to consult with the Academic Conduct Committee to
  protect students against arbitrary and capricious
  grading. However, the university gives EACH
  INSTRUCTOR the freedom and the authority to make
  the final decision as to what they feel is an
  appropriate penalty.
• For a complete explanation of UMBC policy,
  consult the UMBC Academic Handbook, or
  www.umbc.edu/integrity

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Protect your reputation in this community

• As a member of UMBCs academic community, you
  want your professors to think well of you.
• Besides making your interactions in class with
  them more pleasant, you also may be counting on
  them to say nice things about you in letters of
  recommendations for jobs, internships, or
  professional school.
• Students who plagiarize are viewed as being
  unethical because they have violated one of the
  most fundamental cultural values of academia
  respect for other peoples contributions.
  Faculty members who witness a student robbing
  another scholar of credit for their work think of
  those students as immoral. This impression
  will color all future interactions between
  professor and student, beyond what the student-
  who comes from another culture- may think is
  reasonable.
• If you want to protect your reputation in this
  department, you should take great care to learn
  how to properly cite your sources.

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Whats plagiarism?

• Plagiarism. Incorporating someone elses
  intellectual work into your own writing without
  giving them credit.

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What is intellectual work?

• CREATIVE WRITING
• IDEAS
• INFORMATION or DATA

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What is intellectual work?

• CREATIVE WRITING- A particular choice or
  sequence of words to express an idea or fact.
• Example Three different ways to explain the
  symptoms of diabetes.
• polydipsia, polyphagia, and polyuria. . .(1)
• extreme thirst, frequent urination and
  increased appetite(2)
• Are you hungry and thirsty a lot? Are you
  inconvenienced by an overactive bladder? These
  are all signs that you might have diabetes.

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What is intellectual work?

• IDEAS- Interpretations of events, data or facts.
• Example
• Using an analogy of empty chairs to explain how
  enzymes are affected by substrate concentration.

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What is intellectual work?

• INFORMATION- Facts, measurements or results of an
  experiment.
• Example
• The PKU gene is located on chromosome 12 3.

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Ways to plagiarize

• The ones you probably know
• Purchasing a paper from an internet paper-mill
  site.
• Copying a paper written by another student.
• Copying sentences or phrases word-for-word from
  books, encyclopedias, journal articles WITHOUT
  enclosing the words in quotation marks.

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Ways to plagiarize

• Also plagiarism . . .
• Presenting the information in another authors
  work in your own words (a.k.a. paraphrasing)
  without citing the source of the original
  information.
• Reporting facts you just finished learning from
  reading a website without citing the website.
• About 50 of Biology 100L students will do one of
  these on their first paper.

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Summary

• If its information, creative writing or ideas.
• AND you got it from another author
• You MUST cite the source

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Avoiding Plagiarism
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Avoiding plagiarism

• Take careful notes
• Summarize in your own words
• Mark others intellectual work with quotation
  marks and/or in-text citations.
• Provide bibliographic information for your
  sources in a reference list.

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Note-taking

• Avoiding plagiarism begins with good note-taking.
  As you take notes from your reading, be sure to
  keep track of where your information comes from.
  In your notes, you should mark which words are
  your own summaries (paraphrasing) of someone
  elses information, which are your own ideas, and
  which are direct quotations.

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Note-taking strategies

• Before you begin to read a source, prepare a
  blank piece of paper for your notes. Head the
  paper with the complete bibliographic information
  you will need for your reference list.
• Read the material once, from beginning to end,
  then turn the source over (or turn your monitor
  off) and write- in your own words- what you
  learned from the source that you didnt know
  before. Leave space after each of your
  paraphrased statements.
• Now go back and fill in the missing details
  (numbers, facts, etc.). If you must copy a
  phrase verbatim (word-for-word), put quotation
  marks around it.

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Summary techniques 5

• Two ways to summarize information youve learned
  from somewhere else
• Paraphrasing
• Nut shelling

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Nut shelling

• Strip details, examples and extraneous
  information from the source, then rewrite the
  main ideas of the paragraph in your own words in
  a nutshell.

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Nut shelling example 5

• Original text Even though it was located but
  seven miles from Savannah, in terms of style and
  grace the Pin Point, Georgia, of the 1940s and
  1950s was light-years away from its big city
  neighbor to the west. With a population of 500,
  Pin Point was more hamlet than town, more
  drive-past than drive-in. The thought that this
  bump in the road could be the birthplace of a
  child who would rise to become a justice of the
  United States Supreme Court a black child who
  would rise to become a justice of the United
  States Supreme Courtwas inconceivable. The
  distance from here to there, or, as the justice
  himself would grow fond of saying, from the
  outhouse to the courthouse, was simply too great.
  A black child from Pin Point, Georgia, becoming
  a member of the U.S. Supreme Court? It simply
  couldnt happen. Except that it did. 4
• Nutshell Greenya 4 notes that in the small,
  insignificant town of Pin Point, Georgia, no one
  would have predicted that one of its citizens,
  particularly a black citizen, would become a
  justice for the highest court in the land.
  However, that is exactly what happened when
  Clarence Thomas became the second black Supreme
  Court Justice.

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Paraphrasing

• Decide what the author means by each sentence
  in the passage, then report the meaning in your
  own words.
• Details are preserved in paraphrasing.

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Paraphrasing example 5

• Original text Even though it was located but
  seven miles from Savannah, in terms of style and
  grace the Pin Point, Georgia, of the 1940s and
  1950s was light-years away from its big city
  neighbor to the west. With a population of 500,
  Pin Point was more hamlet than town, more
  drive-past than drive-in. The thought that this
  bump in the road could be the birthplace of a
  child who would rise to become a justice of the
  United States Supreme Court a black child who
  would rise to become a justice of the United
  States Supreme Courtwas inconceivable. The
  distance from here to there, or, as the justice
  himself would grow fond of saying, from the
  outhouse to the courthouse, was simply too great.
  A black child from Pin Point, Georgia, becoming
  a member of the U.S. Supreme Court? It simply
  couldnt happen. Except that it did. 4
• Paraphrase In his book, Greenya 4 compares
  the hometown of Clarence Thomas, Pin Point,
  Georgia with the well-known town of Savannah and
  finds Pin Point to be a much less desirable place
  to visit. The author comments on how
  unfathomable it seems that this bump in the
  road place would give rise to a Supreme Court
  Justice. More unbelievable than that would be
  the thought of that Justice being a black man.
  However, Greenya points out that the seemingly
  impossible happened when Clarence Thomas became
  the second black Supreme Court Justice.

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Good and bad paraphrasing

• When paraphrasing, it is important to avoid
  copying phrases and sentence structure.
  Paraphrases must be rewritten in your own words.
  What follows are examples of plagiarized
  paraphrases that simply shuffled phrases and
  substituted synonyms.

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Bad paraphrasing 6

• Original text
• In research writing, sources are cited for two
  reasons to alert readers to the sources of your
  information and to give credit to the writers
  from whom you have borrowed words and ideas. 7
• Plagiarism
• In research writing, we cite sources for a couple
  reasons to notify readers of our information
  sources and give credit to those from whom we
  have borrowed 7.
• NOTE In this example, providing a citation is
  NOT enough. The author of the plagiarized
  passage has also used the creative writing of the
  author of the original text without crediting
  him/her appropriately.

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Fixing bad paraphrasing 6

• Rewrite in your own words or, if you cant think
  of any other way to say it, enclose the original
  phrases in quotation marks
• Original text
• In research writing, sources are cited for two
  reasons to alert readers to the sources of your
  information and to give credit to the writers
  from whom you have borrowed words and ideas.
• Acceptable paraphrases- NOT plagiarism
• A researcher cites her sources to ensure her
  audience knows where she got her information, and
  to recognize and credit the original work 7.
• In her book A Writer's Reference, Diana Hacker
  7 notes, In research writing, sources are
  cited for two reasons to alert readers to the
  sources of your information and to give credit to
  the writers from whom you have borrowed words and
  ideas.

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How to properly cite

• To cite someone elses intellectual work you
  have to do two things
• Mark the passage that is not your own with an
  in-text citation mark and quotation marks (when
  appropriate).
• List the bibliographic information for the source
  of the passage in a reference list.

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Citing direct quotations ( i.e. word-for-word
copying)

• Put quotation marks around copied words.
• Even two-word phrases copied from a source- if
  they are unique- must be enclosed in quotation
  marks.
• Put an in-text citation mark after the final
  quotation mark.

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Example Citing direct quotations

• Put quotation marks around copied words.
• Even two-word phrases copied from a source- if
  they are unique- must be enclosed in quotation
  marks.
• Put an in-text citation mark after the final
  quotation mark.
• In research writing, sources are cited for two
  reasons to alert readers to the sources of your
  information and to give credit to the writers
  from whom you have borrowed words and ideas. 7

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Citing paraphases

• Put an in-text citation mark at the end of each
  sentence that contains new information, even if
  it came from the same source as the previous
  sentence.
• Putting one in-text citation mark at the end of a
  paragraph is NOT sufficient.
• Example- a 1-sentence paraphrase
• A researcher cites her sources to ensure her
  audience knows where she got her information, and
  to recognize and credit the original work 7.

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Citing paraphases Example

• Put an in-text citation mark at the end of each
  sentence that contains new information, even if
  it came from the same source as the previous
  sentence.
• Putting one in-text citation mark at the end of a
  paragraph is NOT sufficient.
• Example- a paragraph-length paraphrase
• Giardiasis, the most common waterborne disease
  caused by an enteric parasite in humans, is
  produced by the flagellated protozoan Giardia
  lamblia (1). The Giardia life cycle present two
  morphologically distinct forms, trophozoites and
  cysts. The disease is caused by the trophozoite
  forms and frequently presents as acute or chronic
  diarrhea (1). . . Transmission occurs through the
  ingestion of Giardia cysts, usually from fecally
  contaminated food or water or interpersonal
  contact (2).8

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In-text citation marks

• There are two different ways
• Number-sequence systems
• Insert , () or at end of passages, with
  replaced with a number representing the order in
  the paper in which the sources appear.
• If same source is cited later in the paper, the
  number is the same. (e.g. all information from
  Jones, 1983, is marked 3 throughout the paper
  because its the third source mentioned in the
  paper, even if the next time its mentioned comes
  after source 12).
• Author-year systems
• Insert (Author last name, year of publication) at
  end of passages.
• If two authors (Last name of first author last
  name of second author, year)
• If three or more authors (Last name of first
  author, et. al., year).

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Which to use?
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Examples of Number-sequence

• Giardiasis, the most common waterborne disease
  caused by an enteric parasite in humans, is
  produced by the flagellated protozoan Giardia
  lamblia (1). The Giardia life cycle present two
  morphologically distinct forms, trophozoites and
  cysts. The disease is caused by the trophozoite
  forms and frequently presents as acute or chronic
  diarrhea (1). . . Transmission occurs through the
  ingestion of Giardia cysts, usually from fecally
  contaminated food or water or interpersonal
  contact (2).9
• This tutorial.
• The papers you will write for Biology 100L.

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Examples of Author-year

• Here is the same passage rewritten in author-year
  format
• Giardiasis, the most common waterborne disease
  caused by an enteric parasite in humans, is
  produced by the flagellated protozoan Giardia
  lamblia (Adam, 1991). The Giardia life cycle
  present two morphologically distinct forms,
  trophozoites and cysts. The disease is caused by
  the trophozoite forms and frequently presents as
  acute or chronic diarrhea (Adam, 1991). . .
  Transmission occurs through the ingestion of
  Giardia cysts, usually from fecally contaminated
  food or water or interpersonal contact (Craun,
  1990).8

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Reference list

• Put at end of paper under a separate heading
  Literature cited.
• Organize in order cited if using number-sequence
  system.
• Organize alphabetically by last name of first
  author for author-year system.
• Bibliographic information to include depends on
  type of source (website, journal article, book,
  etc.)
• Exact format varies. In Biology 100L we use the
  format recommended by the Council of Biology
  Editors.

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Minimum bibliographic information to include in
your reference lists

• Journal articles Authors names, name of
  journal, volume and first page of article,
  year of publication.
• Books Authors names, title of book, year of
  publication, name of publisher, city of
  publisher.
• WebPages Name of page author or page sponsor,
  title of page, URL, date accessed.

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Example Reference lists

• Number-sequence
• Literature cited
• Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E. F. Maniatis, T.
  (1989) Molecular Cloning A Laboratory Manual
  (Cold Spring Harbor Lab. Press, Plainview, NY).
• Holt, W.V. (1982) J Reprod Fertil 64485-9.

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Example Reference lists

• Author-year
• Literature cited
• Holt, W.V. (1982) J Reprod Fertil 64485-9.
• Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E. F. Maniatis, T.
  (1989) Molecular Cloning A Laboratory Manual
  (Cold Spring Harbor Lab. Press, Plainview, NY).

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When DONT I have to cite?

• When providing your own, original analysis of
  other peoples intellectual work
• When expressing an original thought of your own
• When relating information from your own research
  or life experience
• When reporting common knowledge

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When DONT I have to cite?

• When providing your own, original analysis or
  summary of other peoples intellectual work
• Example Making a generalization about a pattern
  or trend in biology gleaned by reading other
  peoples papers. E.g. Eukaryotic genes have
  introns, but prokaryotic genes dont.
• But If someone else makes an analysis or summary
  that you agree with, its still not your own,
  even if you thought of it before you read the
  paper. In science, the first person to publish
  an idea gets credit for it.

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When DONT I have to cite?

• When relating information from your own research,
  or your own life experiences.
• Example A common myth is that swallowed gum
  sits in your stomach, undigested, for seven
  years.
• Example Any data collected by you or your lab
  partners in your biology laboratory class.

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When DONT I have to cite?

• When reporting Common Knowledge
• Common knowledge. Information that the common
  man among your peers is likely to already know
  (without looking it up) before reading your
  paper.
• Use students whose knowledge is limited to what
  they learned in courses that are pre-requisite to
  the course you are writing for as your peer
  group.
• The pre-requisite for Biology 100L is a high
  school diploma. At some schools, you can get a
  high school diploma without taking high school
  biology.

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Common Knowledge in Biology 100/100L

• EXAMPLES
• Diabetes is a disease caused by an inability to
  either make or use insulin.
• DNA is the genetic material in chromosomes.

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NOT common knowledge in Biology 100/100L

• EXAMPLES
• The symptoms of diabetes are polydipsia,
  polyphagia, and polyuria.
• Mice have 20 chromosomes.

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Common misconceptions

• I only need to cite the source of direct
  quotations.
• I dont need to cite information I get from the
  internet.
• When I summarize information in my own words,
  (i.e. paraphrase) it becomes my work, so I dont
  need to cite the information source.
• If the instructor tells us to use certain
  sources, he/she already knows where we got our
  information, so I dont need to cite.

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FAQs 1

• Why dont I have to cite sources when answering
  questions in my lab manual?
• Questions in lab manuals usually ask you to do
  one of two things
• report or interpret your original results from an
  experiment,
• apply information youve been given to a specific
  situation.
• Your data, your interpretations of your data, and
  your analyses are your own original work, and so
  all of these are adequately cited by the name
  (your name) at the top of the assignment.

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FAQs 2

• Ive written papers during the entire 3 years
  Ive been in college, but this is the first time
  Ive ever been charged with plagiarism. Why now?
• A. Plagiarism is an issue that only comes up
  when your assignment requires you to consult
  other peoples writing. Unless you copy another
  students paper, or are writing a library
  research paper, its rarely an issue in your
  creative writing classes (like Engl100). In your
  lab courses, it only comes up when writing the
  introduction or discussion sections of lab
  reports. It also takes time, training, and
  familiarity with the original sources to detect,
  so perhaps your instructors missed it before.

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FAQs 3

• Q. Some places define plagiarism as
  misrepresentation of authorship. While I
  forget to put an in-text citation mark in my
  paper, I also never put in a mark saying the
  information was mine. So why is that
  misrepresentation?
• A. When you put your name at the top of a
  paper, youre claiming that the words, ideas and
  information in the paper is yours. In-text
  citations and quotation marks show the reader the
  exceptions to that rule. If a passage is not
  marked, its assumed to be the authors work by
  default.

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FAQs 4

• Q. I never see citation marks or reference
  lists in newspaper articles or magazines. Are
  you saying that THEY are plagiarizers?
• A. Magazines and newspapers primarily use
  interviews with experts or the man on the
  scene as their source of information, so they
  only need to mention the name and the
  qualifications of the person they are
  interviewing (e.g. according to John Jones, the
  deputy chief of administration). The quality
  of the information they give you, therefore, is
  only as good as that experts memory or
  knowledge of his/her field. Caveat emptor!

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But I didnt know!!

• Ignorance is not an excuse. It is your
  responsibility to become informed.
• This guide was written to address the surprising
  lack of knowledge about plagiarism encountered in
  students in our courses. However, it is your
  responsibility to read it, understand it, and ask
  questions if you dont.

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Resources

• Citation style guides (including Council of
  Biology Editors). http//aok.lib.umbc.edu/referenc
  e/BI/styleguides.php3
• UMBC Policies on Academic Integrity
  www.umbc.edu/integrity
• UMBC Kuhn Library webpage on plagiarism
  http//aok.lib.umbc.edu/reference/plagiarism.php3

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Literature cited

• Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, OMIM (TM).
  Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. MIM
  Number 222100 12/8/2003 . URL
  http//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/omim/. Accessed
  1/10/2004.
• Anonymous. Juvenile Diabetes Research
  Foundation. Homepage. URL http//www.jdrf.org/i
  ndex.cfm. Accessed 1/10/2004.
• Anonymous. Phenylketonuria. Genes and
  Disease. URL http//www.ncbi.nih.gov/books/bv.fc
  gi?callbv.View..ShowSectionridgnd. Accessed
  1/10/2004.
• Greenya, John. Silent Justice The Clarence
  Thomas Story. NJ Barricade Books, Inc., 2001.
• Patricia Denver and LaTasha Tucker.
  Plagiarism What it is and how to Avoid It. in
  Lark Claassen, ed., Symbiosis. Boston Pearson
  Custom Publishing, 2003.
• Student Judicial Affairs, University of
  California, Davis. October 1999. Avoiding
  Plagiarism Mastering the Art of Scholarship.
  http//sja.ucdavis.edu/avoid.htm. Accessed
  October 2003.
• Hacker D. A Writers Reference. London St.
  Martins Press 1995.
• HD Lujan, et al. (1996) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
  USA 93, 7628-7633.