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Plagiarism: the classic crime enters the digital agePublished in the Aggie on May 19, 2004 “Are you honest?” demanded Professor Hamlet of the doomed Ophelia right before he referred her to Student Judicial Affairs. “Are you fair?” Ophelia emphatically insisted upon her innocence, even though Hamlet caught her plagiarizing when he searched the Internet and found that Ophelia had bought her term paper online. Ophelia was referred to Student Judicial Affairs and after admitting that she violated the Code of Academic Conduct, she accepted disciplinary Probation and will receive a grade of “F” on the paper. With the internet and the Copy/Paste commands on our computers, plagiarism is more common than ever, but it’s still the same old crime of “using another person’s work or ideas as your own without giving proper credit to the person.” Occurrences of plagiarism on the UC Davis campus are taken very seriously. This school year alone, 132 students have been referred to Student Judicial Affairs for suspected plagiarism. How to Avoid Plagiarism: Place quotation marks around borrowed material. Cutting and pasting information from the Internet onto your paper is plagiarism. Even though the info is not in a printed publication, it is still someone else’s property. Properly cite your sources. Just “quoting” your source isn’t enough; you must add a footnote or endnote to the reference. If you’re confused about how to cite sources, the UC Davis Library Web site offers several guides to proper citation at http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/instruc/citing/index.html. Gauge the reliability of Web sites. The Web can be a great source of information, but not all Web sites are very reliable. The UC Davis Library offers many reliable electronic resources, which can be found at the Electronic Databases section of http://lib.ucdavis.edu. Print out a copy of the Web site you cited. This is helpful in the event that the Web site goes down and the link you have becomes inactive. Do not buy papers online. Modern technology allows students to pay for papers—and also for professors to catch them in the act. But don’t waste your cash: It’s very easy for a Professor to simply type lines from your paper into a Google search box and call up the sources you’re plagiarizing. There are other kinds of resources that allow them to check whole papers or sections thereof for plagiarism. Plan ahead. Give yourself plenty of time to write your papers. Most instances of plagiarism occur because the student did not know to cite his source or accidentally forgot to do so. The student is often under stress to finish papers and cuts corners in the process. At any rate, intentional or accidental plagiarism are treated the same. For more information about plagiarism, visit Student Judicial Affairs site at http://sja.ucdavis.edu/avoid.htm. Bits & Bytes Archives2006-2007
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