Definition of Plagiarism
What is Plagiarism?
In instructional settings, plagiarism is a multifaceted and ethically complex problem. However, if any definition of plagiarism is to be helpful to administrators, faculty, and students, it needs to be as simple and direct as possible within the context for which it is intended.
Definition: In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else's language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source.
This definition applies to texts published in print or online, to manuscripts, and to the work of other student writers.
Most current discussions of plagiarism fail to distinguish between:
- Submitting someone else's text as one's own or attempting to blur the line between one's own ideas or words and those borrowed from another source, and...
- Carelessly or inadequately citing ideas and words borrowed from another source.
Such discussions conflate plagiarism with the misuse of sources.
Ethical writers make every effort to acknowledge sources fully and appropriately in accordance with the contexts and genres of their writing. A student who attempts (even if clumsily) to identify and credit his or her source, but who misuses a specific citation format or incorrectly uses quotation marks or other forms of identifying material taken from other sources, has not plagiarized. Instead, such a student should be considered to have failed to cite and document sources appropriately.
Council of Writing Program Administrators, 2014