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This infographic is a flow chart that can be followed when trying to quickly see whether or not you are plagiarizing in your written work. Sometimes it will be hard to know if you have plagiarized. The series of questions can help you decide how to correct if necessary during the editing process of your written assignments.

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Why would you want to plagiarize? This Edutopia article is a great read on the reasons that students plagiarize. Do you relate to any of these reasons or wonder why plagiarism even exists? This article serves as a great conversation starter when evaluating how you feel about your ability to produce work of your own and being able to point out plagiarism. Think about some of the explanations of plagiarism as well as the possible obstacles that create the desire to plagiarize. No judgement please!

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One teacher addresses plagiarism by examining the underlying causes such as a lack of confidence or time management skills.

It's happening again. I feel the sentence structure at a subdermal level and know I'm confronting plagiarism before my eyes reach the period. A quick Google search reveals that my ninth-grade student did not write this sentence: "The memories stirred by the song cause Odysseus to weep, and, though he tries to hide it, the king notices and distracts the crowd by suggesting they begin an athletic competition."

No single word in the passage is beyond my student's reach, but I know what his writing sounds like-and this is not it. My search leads me to a site called Course Hero where "his" words appear. I email the student with a link to the site and ask him to come in to discuss. He responds politely, but he is adamant that he has never been on the site. "You can check my computer history," he says. I schedule a meeting with him.

In 20 years of teaching, I've found ways to decrease plagiarism, but I have yet to eliminate it. Plagiarism frustrates me not only because it is cheating but also because it makes me feel as though my teaching has fallen short.

The Council of Writing Program Administrators identifies causes of plagiarism, including students' fear of taking risks in their writing, having poor time management skills, and viewing the assignment and standards for documentation as unimportant.

Addressing plagiarism requires building students' confidence in their writing, developing skills to navigate school stress, fostering investment in the assignment, and creating understanding of plagiarism and attribution. As a teacher, I have agency to address these issues. My response to plagiarism addresses four forces that lead a student to plagiarize.

Satisfaction With One's Own Words

Students are sometimes maddened by the lumpy, inelegant sound of their writing. They read the words of someone with years of experience that sound so much more fluid. They might experiment with switching out a few synonyms or just paste the passage into their document. "That's what I was going to say anyway," a student once said in defense of a copied passage.

I tell my students that they have to write like a ninth grader before they can write like a tenth grader. The trick is to keep writing, in their own voice and with their own words. There are no shortcuts.

If I praise my students and use gentle methods to nudge them along, I hope they will trust themselves as writers. If my response sows doubt, they may lose faith in their own voices and look for someone else's words.

The Value of the Assignment

The task of stringing one's thoughts together can be daunting-especially if students aren't invested in their thoughts initially. The Council of Writing Program Administrators argues that when presented with "generic or unparticularized" assignments, "students may believe they are justified in looking for canned responses."

In the earlier example, the student hadn't plagiarized the "thinking" part of the writing; he'd plagiarized the "generic" summary portion.

I want to introduce students to Homer's epics, and I want them to understand the value of summary when writing about literature. I want them to analyze patterns and themes in their reading. Was this assignment the best way to teach these skills? Upon reflection, offering a mini-lesson on summary would have turned the rote part of this assignment into an opportunity for refining a valuable skill. Recognizing my unintended complicity is important in decreasing students' motivation for cheating.

In their book Beyond Literary Analysis, Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell assert that students' analyses are more vibrant and authentic when the students are driven by the passion and authority that come from writing about their own areas of expertise.

Revealing Roadblocks

The student who plagiarized had missed class and submitted the paper late. I explained that the passage he had used could be found in various places and that I was not concerned with where he found it, but rather why he used it instead of his own words.

In discussing the why, we focused on the roadblocks the student perceived. I gave him a mini-lesson on summarizing, and he practiced it right on the spot. We discussed attribution, and brainstormed attributive tags. We talked about ways to address the pressure of facing past-due assignments, and when he suggested "ask for help" I cheered his answer. He offered to rewrite the summary.

Understanding Plagiarism

There are times students may not understand how writers use others' ideas and words. Understanding attribution and citation is an important skill for avoiding plagiarism. A colleague asked students to draw a map for the setting in To Kill a Mockingbird. A student painstakingly redrew one she found on Google, not understanding that she was to devise the map from textual evidence in the book.

Particularly in this age of rapid-fire reposting and image sharing, our students' perception of copying might not match ours. In " Of Flattery and Thievery: Reconsidering Plagiarism in a Time of Virtual Information," education professor P.L. Thomas writes that helping students understand plagiarism requires outlining a framework for defining terms, developing guidelines, and establishing consequences.

No two plagiarism episodes are alike, but all offer learning opportunities for both the student and the teacher. In the Odysseus example, I decided to give the student half credit for his paper. I explained that aside from the plagiarized first paragraph, his analysis exhibited solid thinking and expression. In short, I valued his work. I reminded him of repercussions of future plagiarism, which in our school involves disciplinary action. This was one of the final papers of the semester, but I will check in with him next fall, revisit the struggles he mentioned, and remind him that I am his ally on his road to becoming a competent writer.

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One teacher addresses plagiarism by examining the underlying causes such as a lack of confidence or time management skills. It's happening again. I feel the sentence structure at a subdermal level and know I'm confronting plagiarism before my eyes reach the period.

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Connection between citing sources and plagiarism

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Connection between citing sources and plagiarism

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Ever wondering the connection between citing sources and plagiarism? This blog post by Plagiarism.org examines how we present submitted work could determine whether or not plagiarism has occurred. This could be due to lack of proper citation of sources or simply copying and pasting and passing it on as your own work. This blog post shows how important it is to know what plagiarism looks like and how to avoid doing it. Use this as advice in how to approach using sources and making sure you understand what plagiarism is and the consequences it may include.

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Plagiarism is the act of taking words, ideas or information from others and presenting them as your own. While many plagiarists do this very deliberately, it's also possible to do it simply through the lack of proper citation.

The reason for this lies in what your audience, in this case your instructors, expect from the work that you hand in.

When you turn in a work bearing your name, the expectation is that you are submitting work that you have done on your own. That's part of what putting your name on an assignment means: that the work contained inside it is yours, unless expressly stated otherwise.

Therefore, when you use the work of others, it's important to clearly and correctly cite that content to indicate that it isn't your original work. Citations also show that you have done the proper research work and that you've consulted appropriate texts for your assignment.

Failure to cite basically means that you are claiming that the entire paper and all of its information as yours and, if that's untrue, it's plagiarism.

Where things become murkier is when one attempts to cite the work but does so incorrectly. This can include everything from simply using the wrong citation style (EG: Using MLA instead of APA or vice versa) to footnoting a passage lifted directly, but not quoting it.

Those cases depend heavily on the exact circumstances. If one simply uses the wrong citation style, an instructor may lower the grade, but wouldn't consider it as plagiarism since the source is fully cited (just in the wrong way for that assignment).

However, in situations where the citation is neither correct nor complete, it can definitely still be considered plagiarism. For example, if you use a passage and don't quote it, it doesn't matter if you cite the source, because you only gave credit for the information, not the words.

Still, instructors often look at these cases differently and may be more lenient if there's a clear attempt to not plagiarize. Such cases are often not treated as disciplinary matters but rather as problems with the assignment.

Those decisions are left up to your teachers. Since plagiarism is sometimes considered an offense where the intent of the accused doesn't matter, your instructor and your school can choose to take strict action, even if you didn't intend to plagiarize.

If you are unsure whether you are citing your sources adequately, the best thing you can do is talk with your instructor and and show them what you're doing. Working with your instructor will ensure that you meet their standards of citation and let them know the issues you are struggling with.

That can go to great lengths to head off a plagiarism allegation before it starts and greatly help improve the grades you get when the assignment is returned.

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What does citation have to do with plagiarism? - Plagiarism.org

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Plagiarism is the act of taking words, ideas or information from others and presenting them as your own. While many plagiarists do this very deliberately, it's also possible to do it simply through the lack of proper citation. The reason for this lies in what your audience, in this case your instructors, expect from the work that you hand in.

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This website has several different resources for citing sources. It includes a video explaining why we cite sources. There are also links that help you cite in different formats (APA, Chicago Style and MLA). It even has a link that shows how to cite Tweets! This is a great reference guide when you are not sure how to cite a source that you are using in your inquiry.

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Skip to Main Content

It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

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LibGuides: Middle School Education Research Guide: Citing Sources

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Skip to Main Content It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.

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This website provides help with citing resources. It is a great way to see how the citation should look in the required format (APA, MLA or Chicago Style). You can add annotations to the citation and view the in-text citation using the citation generator.You can type all the information yourself or paste a link to see if they can pre-fill some of the information. Be sure to double check the information in your source to add before clicking the cite source button.

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Improve your paper with our Proofreading & Editing Service, Plagiarism Checker, Citation Generator, and extensive Knowledge Base.

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This video by Copyright and Creativity explains what media sources you should and should not trust, as well as what you do and do not have permission to use. It teaches you what to look for when deciding how to navigate the use (or reuse) of  media sources like music, videos and images. The information in this video not only can be useful when doing research in the classroom, but also during your personal navigation online, protecting you from untrustworthy media sources.

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C&C B.2 Finding Media Online—What’s Lawful and What’s Not

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Need a visual representation on Copyright? This infographic by Copyright and Creativity explains what copyright does and does not protect. It explains related terms like copyright infringement and fair use. This infographic serves as a guide when considering the copyright of the different sources we use in the classroom. Whenever you’re not sure whether something is copyrighted or not, refer to this visual.

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This is a resource in which you can find images in a collection that don’t involve jumping through the hoops of copyright by providing a “free, simple, and standardized way to grant copyright permissions”. When searching, they give you the attribution (who to credit for the resource). This is great to use when using pictures in a presentation (digital or print). I suggest using this rather than the traditional Google Image search. It is available as an add-on for your browser, so see me if you need any assistance with that process.

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Better Sharing, Brighter Future

"Twenty Years of Creative Commons (in Sixty Seconds)" by Ryan Junell and Glenn Otis Brown for Creative Commons is licensed via CC BY 4.0 and includes adaptations of the multiple open and public domain works. View full licensing and attribution information about all works included in the video on Flickr.

Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture we need to address the world's most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all.

Learn more

The nonprofit behind the licenses and tools the world uses to share

For over 20 years, Creative Commons has supported a global movement built on a belief in the power of open access to knowledge and creativity. From Wikipedia to the Smithsonian, organizations and individuals rely on our work to share billions of historic images, scientific articles, cultural artifacts, educational resources, music, and more!

Wikipedia

55+ million articles

Every one of Wikipedia's 55 million plus articles are shared openly and freely using a CC license.

The Met

492,000+ images

All images of public-domain works in the Met's collection are openly available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

Khan Academy

100,000+ lessons

Many of the lessons found on Khan Academy are openly licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA.

Wikipedia

55+ million articles

Every one of Wikipedia's 55 million plus articles are shared openly and freely using a CC license.

The Met

492,000+ images

All images of public-domain works in the Met's collection are openly available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

Khan Academy

100,000+ lessons

Many of the lessons found on Khan Academy are openly licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA.

Wikipedia

55+ million articles

Every one of Wikipedia's 55 million plus articles are shared openly and freely using a CC license.

The Met

492,000+ images

All images of public-domain works in the Met's collection are openly available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

Khan Academy

100,000+ lessons

Many of the lessons found on Khan Academy are openly licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA.

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Cropped, Open Culture Strategic Workshop by Filipa Alfama, CC BY 4.0

One year after Creative Commons (CC) hosted an exploratory Open Culture Roundtable, in Lisbon, Portugal, which initiated the Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture (TAROC) global initiative, nearly 50 stakeholders from all continents gathered again for a strategic workshop, in Lisbon in May 2024. In this blog post, we share a snapshot of key highlights.

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Open Culture, Open Heritage

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Open Culture
Cropped, Open Culture Strategic Workshop by Filipa Alfama, CC BY 4.0

One year after Creative Commons (CC) hosted an exploratory Open Culture Roundtable, in Lisbon, Portugal, which initiated the Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture (TAROC) global initiative, nearly 50 stakeholders from all continents gathered again for a strategic workshop, in Lisbon in May 2024. In this blog post, we share a snapshot of key highlights.

About CC

Open Culture, Open Heritage

About CC, Community

About CC

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Le Sortie de l'opéra en l'an 2000 by A. Robida - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division - Public Domain.

" An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe. Plate XXXI. ". By Thomas Wright. Public Domain

" Community Needs Care" by Camila Leão for Fine Acts x OBI is licensed via https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

CC staff photos are licensed under CC BY 4.0. Gratitude to Sara Jordan Photography.

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Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture we need to address the world's most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all.

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This web page is a hub of information on copyright in the United States. You will have access to the most current laws on copyright, a definition of copyright, what the copyright office does, and how to copyright your own works at some point. This resource will help you get the most up-to-date understanding of copyright as it relates to how we use copyrighted sources in the classroom (pictures, books, etc.). Use this web page to gain clarity on what copyright is and is not.

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U.S. Copyright Office | U.S. Copyright Office

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This source presents information about copyright in the form of a comic book. It helps you visualize in an easy-to-follow comic what it looks like to gain the correct copyright of a source. Use this to get a better understanding of how to understand copyright law and think about this when using pictures for certain assignments and knowing how to properly give credit.