Academic Integrity
Plagiarism
You commit plagiarism if you do not give proper credit to the text, concept, research results etc. of another author or if you use a text incorrectly e.g. if a paraphrase does not contain a reference to the source or if it changes or distorts its meaning or if a reference is incomplete or erroneous. The most common reason for committing plagiarism is that students want to obtain good results with as little effort as possible. In many cases, however, plagiarism is committed unintentionally.
Plagiarism Checkup
With Turnitin® The Library offers a useful tool for checking the originality of one’s own texts by comparing them to a variety of online sources.
Plagiarism - Glossary
Little glossary of plagiarism
Unintentional plagiarism
This occurs when writers have little knowledge about dealing with sources and bibliographic data or when they are unable to detect the source’s origin, especially when using Internet sources.
Intentional plagiarism
This is defined theft of someone else’s intellectual property, also called intellectual theft. There are various types of intentional plagiarism. These are two of the most common types: a text is created by mixing (copy/paste) passages from two or more sources, thus making it impossible to identify their origin or the writer does not clearly indicate where a direct quotation starts or ends.
Quoting and Referencing
When is it necessary to quote? When we do research, study and write, we use sources (texts, pictures, statistics etc.) of which we are not the original authors, but which help us to compare, clarify or support our assertions. Remember that the reader of our text, thanks to the references given, will be able to immediately identify the quoted texts and sources. Proper quoting and referencing therefore not only means to give credit to the original author and the sources used, but also to respect copyright and to understand how to best use these sources for our purpose. The term information literacy comprises all these skills.
Reference Manager
Quotations - Glossary
Little glossary of quotations
What is a bibliography?
A complete list, organized according to precise rules, of all the sources quoted and used for the writing of the text.
What is a quotation?
- Direct quotation: Exact words originally said/written by another author are repeated in the text.
- Indirect quotation: A summary, paraphrase or reference to a work, a concept, a theory etc. originally created or developed by another author.
What is a paraphrase?
A restatement of the work of another person using one’s own words. Paraphrasing correctly means that it is not sufficient to change just a few words of the original work. It is important to change the words and the sentence structure without modifying the content and the meaning of the original text. Furthermore, remember that paraphrased text passages must be referenced as the concept originally comes from another source, even if we use our own words. By paraphrasing correctly and by using one’s own writing style the original passage fits better into one’s own work.