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Psychology: Plagiarism

What is Plagiarism

Plagiarism is using someone else’s ideas or words without giving them proper credit. Plagiarism can range from unintentional (forgetting to include a source in a bibliography) to intentional (buying a paper online, using another writer’s ideas as your own to make your work sound smarter). Beginning writers and expert writers alike can all plagiarize. Understand that plagiarism is a serious charge in academia, but also in professional settings. 

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When is it Plagiarism?

There are instances when something is clearly intentional plagiarism: buying, stealing, or borrowing a paper from someone else. This includes: 

  • Copying a blog post or stealing an article from online.  
  • Hiring someone to write your paper for you.  
  • Copying a large section of text from a source without making it clear it comes from somewhere else through quotation marks or proper citation.  
  • Intentionally failing to cite someone else’s work, to claim that the ideas and words belong to you. 
  • It is possible to plagiarize from yourself. In academia, if you repurpose a paper from previous class or write one paper for two classes without the instructor’s permission this is plagiarism.  

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Additional Resources

Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism Explanation in 3 Minutes