Plagiarism Definition

Plagiarism

The unified definition of plagiarism has three criteria that all need to match:

(1) The use of ideas, concepts, words, or structures
(2) without appropriately acknowledging the source
(3) to benefit [in a setting where originality is expected].


The most common forms of plagiarism are:

Inaccurately citing the source. 51%
Interweaving various sources together without citing. 43%
Using quotations, but not citing the source. 26%
Proper citations, but failing to change structure/wording of the ideas. 21%
Melding cited and uncited sections of the piece. 17%
Citing some, but not all passages that should be cited. 12%
Re-writing someone’s work without properly citing sources. 11%
Taking passages from own previous work without adding citations. 8%
Submitting someone’s work as own. 2%

Percentage values reflect the number of detected occurences per 100 US undergraduate students.

Summary: Most cases of plagiarism can be prevented by employing proper citation.



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