Plagiarism

Plagiarism is passing off somebody else’s ideas, thoughts, pictures, theories, words, stories, graphics, text, and other visuals as one’s own. Plagiarism takes many forms and it’s not necessarily intentional. In some cases people intentionally take a passage word-for-word, put it in their own work and do not appropriately give credit the original author. In other cases, authors may unintentionally piece together paraphrased and fragmented text, which is extracted from several works without properly citing the original references. Journal editors and publishers usually reject manuscripts if they contain any form of plagiarism, including unintentional plagiarism.

All the following are examples of plagiarism:

• Submitting someone else's work as your own
• Copying words or ideas from someone else’s work without giving credit
• Failing to add a quotation to quoted words along with crediting the original author
• Giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
• Changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
• Copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not

The University regards plagiarism as a serious matter. If the student’s instructor/supervisor finds out that the student has committed plagiarism, he/she is to report the incident to the Faculty Dean for action to be taken accordingly.

Cases will be investigated and penalties may range among any of the measures listed below,depending on the degree of plagiarism committed:

• Asking the student to rewrite the paper, thesis or project
• Issuing a Dean’s warning
• Issuing a President’s warning
• Withdrawal from the course in which the student has committed plagiarism
• Prohibiting the student from defending his/her thesis