Plagiarism and Citation Policy

Plagiarism will not be tolerated and will constitute an automatic 'F.' This policy does not extend to the borrowing of ideas from the web for research paper design and presentation, but does extend to the content of the paper as submitted.

Borrowing ideas for presentation in a web format from other web sites is encouraged and does not constitute plagiarism as long as the presentation contains either an explanatory section indicating the sources and methods used in creating the presentation or a hyperlink to an explanatory note.

Every quotation, paraphrase, and combination should be acknowledged, either in a parenthetical citation within the text that gives the author's last name, date of publication of the book or article, and the page reference(s) or be hyperlinked to a page that accomplishes the same goal. All quotes over three lines should be indented and set apart from your text. All sources cited in parentheses should be listed in a “Works Cited” list at the end of the paper or hyperlinked to a footnote or "Works Cited" page.

For example, the following quote about plagiarism is both relevant and properly cited:

Cheating or Defrauding

There are two common forms of fraud or cheating in papers, plagiarism and padding of bibliography. For the student who deliberately carries on these preactices, we can say nothing, because his error is self-conscious. If one wishes to hand in a literal transcription of someone else's work, there is really little that can be done, since to tell the truth, most of the time this practice will not be discovered, although discovery will result in instant expulsion. One wonders, however, why such a student is wasting his time with college work in the first place since if he took the same attritude in the business world he would really be making a profit -- until he went to jail.

There are, however, forms of plagiarism and padding that are not willful, but that result from confusion about procedure. A paraphrase of a source one has read without any reference to the fact that one is paraphrasing is a form of plagiarism. At the very best, such work will be marked very low because of its lack of originality. The simplest way to avoid such difficulty is to be absolutely sure that when you have depended upon a source, primary or secondary, for any information or opinion that appears in the text of the paper, a footnote reference [or in this course, a parenthetical reference] is given to the source. This will not only overcome any problem of an accusation of copying, but will also give you some measure of the originality of your own work (Cantor & Schneider 1967, 227).

Although there are several acceptable methods of documentation, the simplest is parenthetical citations outlined in Kate L. Turabian, A Manual For Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations - see any fairly recent edition such as the 5th edition, 1987, pp. 111-119 (for parenthetical citations), and pp. 274-277 (for how to list sources at the end of a paper). For other acceptable methods of citation, including an on-going review of approaches to citing material in electronic form visit the Concordia University Library citation.html.

For writing and research assistance, visit the library's web site (Note: Because of the volatile nature of information on the Web, saving the most important information derived from Web sources to a local file is generally a good idea if you have the resources to do so. Files can be easily downloaded using Netscape Communicator or other web site copying software).

Background reading (suggested, but not required):

Cantor, Norman F. and Richard I. Schneider. How to Study History. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1967.

Salzman, Maurice. Plagiarism. The “Art” of Stealing Literary Material. Los Angeles: Parker, Stone & Baird, 1931.

return to Ed Papenfuse's Teaching in the Age of the Internet homepage

revised 9/4/1999