Kronkosky Charitable Foundation: Foundation Research

"You plagiarize when, intentionally or not, you use someone else's words or ideas but fail to credit that person. You plagiarize even when you do credit the author but use his exact words without so indicating with quotation marks or block indentation. You also plagiarize when you use words so close to those in your source, that if your work were placed next to the source, it would be obvious that you could not have written what you did without the source at your elbow." (p. 167)

According to the Publication Manual of the American Psychology Association, plagiarism is the presentation of "substantial portions or elements of another's work or data as [one's] own, even if the other work or data source is cited occasionally" (1997, 293). Further, one must "take responsibility and credit, including authorship credit, only for work they have actually performed or to which they have contributed" (1997, 293). What is apparent from both definitions is that the act of plagiarism is more inclusive than the process of transposing another's words; rather, paraphrasing, rewording, or even consulting another source without providing a proper citation may constitute plagiarism.

The APA provides a citation scheme for traditional sources:

Periodical:
      Kernis, M.H., Cornell, D.P., Sun, C. -R, Berry, A. & Harlow, T. (1993). There's more to self-esteem than whether it is high or low. The importance of stability of self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1190-1204.

Non Periodical:
      Saxe, G.B. (1991). Cultural and cognitive development: Studies in mathematical understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Edited, with parenthetical information:
      Baker, F.M. , & Lightfoot, O.B. (1993). Psychiatric care of ethnic elders. In A. C. Gaw (ED.) , Cultural, ethnicity, and mental illness (pp. 517-552). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press

The intellectual property rights commonly associated with information drawn from traditional publications (books, periodicals, journals, etc.) must also be applied to internet sources. As with traditional publications, the risk of plagiarism remains; indeed, the convenience of cutting and pasting from the internet makes the act of unwittingly "borrowing" ideas an even more hazardous temptation.

The Modern Language Association (MLA) has provided the following examples for internet citations. If you have any further questions, or are unsure of how to cite a particular reference, visit the MLA web page at http://www.mla.org/.

Scholarly Project:

Victorian Women Writers Project. Ed. Perry Willett. Apr. 1997. Indiana U. 26 Apr. 1997 <http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/>.