Electronic Plagiarism Seminar

DEFINITIONS

Copyright

Legal protection of intellectual property (not to be confused with trademark).

Plagiarism is closely related to copyright.  Individuals who plagiarize either have no understanding of copyright, or have no respect for the intellectual property of others.  Le Moyne College has developed a Copyright Manual, containing policies and procedures,  to guide its faculty, staff, and students. 

Additional information can be obtained by going to the US Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, as well as  Stanford University Libraries Copyright and Fair Use site, a very thorough and well-done site, and the University of Texas System's Crash Course in Copyright, which as of 5/15/01 had an article about Napster.  The UT web site is probably easier to navigate for the average lay person. 

Intellectual Property

Common Knowledge

From Indiana U. Writing Tutorial: facts which can be verified in a number of places and are likely to be known by a large number of people. Both must apply—if you didn’t know it, and had to look it up, you should cite it.

Data

A character in Star Trek: Next Generation. The plural form of datum. Another word for facts, principles, statistics. Observed and verifiable results. The basis for an assumption or argument.

Facts

Cannot be copyrighted.  But, this does not mean that you do not need to cite the source of the facts when using in your own work!  Facts can be manipulated, or added to other facts to create something which can be copyrighted, such as baseball statistics / box scores.

Plagiarism

Presenting someone else’s ideas or work as your own, without attribution. All academics agree that it is vital to define it for students, providing clear examples of unacceptable use. At Le Moyne College, faculty and students use Hacker's Rules for Writers (2000) which explains what plagiarism is and how to avoid it on pp. 392-394 and 399-402. (Hacker's Pocket Guide (1996) explains it on pp. 83-86) Other professional organizations and commonly-used documents such as handbooks also define the term.

Scientific Misconduct (Pathological Science, Voodoo Science)

Article on the topic: Bauer, Henry. "Pathological science is not scientific misconduct (nor is it pathological)." HYLE 8(2) 2002: 5-20. http://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/8-1/bauer.htm

See also the Scientific Misconduct page for additional information.

Self-Plagiarism

From the Northern Illinois University's Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center, on the ORI Responsible Authorship web site: "Self-plagiarism is defined as reusing one's own work that has been submitted previously as an assessed item for another publication." This may include such works as formal grant proposals. Remember that one purpose of citing sources it to take the reader to the original work. Many educational institutions have policies that prohibit turning in the same paper for two different classes -- know what your policy is.

Trademark

Legal protection for a name or symbol which identifies a product, company, or item. Protects words, names, symbols, sounds, or colors that distinguish goods and services. Trademarks, unlike patents, can be renewed forever as long as they are being used in business.

This page was created on 2 December 1999 and last updated on 7 October 2007.