Electronic Plagiarism Seminar

GUIDES FOR STUDENTS

The following sites provide guidance for students to avoid plagiarizing when writing papers. Students should be encouraged to seek help from the writing center, a professor, or a reputable published guide. Most libraries have copies of all the accepted style guides, and many exist on the Internet. Librarians are an excellent source of assistance for finding resources to use in your papers and presentations. Hacker's Rules for Writers (2000) has a two-page listing of online resources for writers.

Citing Sources

• Online writing labs: The English Department at Le Moyne College has an impressive web page with links to online writing labs (OWLs). I particularly like the Purdue University OWL. These sites offer extensive guidance for writing papers.
• Le Moyne's Academic Support Center offers tutoring as well, and can assist students in writing papers
• Dartmouth College's student publication Sources: Their Use and Acknowledgment lists numerous examples of citation styles (primarily MLA, APA, and Science, with links to other styles). Also contains a good working definition of plagiarism, with solid examples. Highly recommended. The page on When to Cite Sources has a nice description of common knowledge.
• Learn to use RefWorks, available at Le Moyne, to accurately and easily cite your resources.

Writing skills

• Sharon Williams, at the Hamilton College Writing Center, has developed a page for students wishing to improve their writing skills and avoid plagiarism, focusing primarily on notetaking.
• Within the Purdue OWL, there is an excellent guide to Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing, which may help prevent accusations of plagiarism.
• How to write a term paper, a free commercial online guide, provides guidance for citations and using online sources. Crafting a thesis is an excellent guide.

Avoiding plagiarism

• Academic Support Center at the University of Northern British Columbia. http://www.unbc.ca/lsc/writing/Plagiarism.pdf : Excellent if brief learning skills for avoiding plagiarism.
• Academic Integrity at Princeton is a marvelous collection of essays on various aspects of the topic, such as collaboration, common knowledge, and plagiarism, and includes clear and easy guidelines.
• Turnitin.com has a new research resources section which provides assistance for students working on papers.
• If your school subscribes to a plagiarism detection service (Le Moyne subscribes to Turnitin.com), ask your professor if you may submit your paper ahead of time to check for plagiarism.
• Run some questionable sentences through the phrase search in the advanced mode of Google.
• Learn to put others' thoughts and words into your own words: learn to summarize and paraphrase.
• Keep careful notes! Maintain complete and accurate bibliographic information. Use software available to help you, such as RefWorks (available at Le Moyne) or some of the free software available, such as MyBib at http://www.easybib.com/ or the Landmark Citation Machine at http://www.landmark-project.com/citation_machine/index.php
• Make sure you understand what you are reading so that you don't use someone else's words instead of your own.
• Ask for assistance at your writing center.
• You need to cite ANYTHING that comes from another source, no matter who or where. The only thing you don't need to cite are are your own thoughts and ideas.

   

This page was created on 2 December 1999 and last updated on 30 September 2005.