Plagiarism

Copyright 1995
Rich Halstead-Nussloch, Bob Harbort, and Mike Murphy
All Rights Reserved

Plagiarism is a required area of discussion in education today. Put simply, plagiarism is the theft of words, thoughts, and ideas. We find plagiarism unethical and unprofessional, and we will not tolerate it in the MSCS program.

Having said that quite sternly, we also want to foster sharing, collaboration, and the use of prior research. These educational approaches sometimes seem at odds with plagiarism. Our viewpoint is that one can take steps to collaborate, share, and use prior research without plagiarizing. To this end, we recommend that you understand what plagiarism is and is not, and follow the guidelines charted below.

What is Plagiarism?

Gibaldi [GIBA88] provides an excellent discussion of plagiarism:

"You may have heard the word plagiarism used in relation to lawsuits in the publishing and recording industries. You may also have had classroom discussions about academic plagiarism. Plagiarism is the act of using another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source. ... In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have written or thought something that you have in fact borrowed from someone else."

For example, if you write the following without any documentation, you have plagiarized:

Establishing the correctness of an iterative algorithm can be done by showing each of the following four points to be true:

  1. The invariant is initially true.
  2. An execution of the loop always preserves the invariant.
  3. The invariant must capture the correctness of the algorithm.
  4. The loop must terminate.

Now, you are probably asking yourself, How am I ever going to write anything? It all seems like plagiarism!

What Is Not Plagiarism?

Take heart, there is an easy, acceptable method to use other scientist's materials without plagiarism. For example, if you write the following with the documented reference citation, you have not plagiarized:

According to Carrano, Helman, and Veroff [CARR93], establishing the correctness of an iterative algorithm can be done by showing each of the following four points to be true:

  1. The invariant is initially true.
  2. An execution of the loop always preserves the invariant.
  3. The invariant must capture the correctness of the algorithm.
  4. The loop must terminate.

[CARR93] is called a designator, and it refers to an entry in your bibliography or list of references. It corresponds to the source of the ideas in this passage of a paper.

If the statement you use is copied directly from a source, then it should also be designated with the use of quotes ". . ." When you use your own words to paraphrase some else's ideas, then quotes are not necessary.

Process and Mechanics

The Difference between the Bibliography and the References

Within the CS department, we distinguish between a paper's Bibliography and its References. The Bibliography cites material read for background that is not specifically cited in the paper. For example, a course textbook might be cited in the Bibliography to acknowledge it as a general source of information for the paper.

The References cites sources of material specifically called out in the paper. For example, you might quote or paraphrase what an acknowledged expert in an area says about a topic. Include these citations in the Reference section of your paper. Keep the Bibliography and References separate in your papers.

Constructing Bibliographic and Reference Citations

The syntax of a citation as it appears in the bibliography or reference section of your paper is described below.

For articles:

[<designator>]
<author list>. <article title>. <journal title>, <volume(number)>:<page range>, <date>.
[DOVE89c]
Barbara Doveman and Gene Wiemer. Fluid movement of data files on an SNA backbone. Western Computing, 3(4):35-47, April 1989.
The designator is constructed with the first four letters (all upper case) of the first author's last name (use X if the name is shorter than four letters), followed by the last two digits of the year of publication, followed optionally by a lower case letter to uniquely identify the designator if there are multiple copies with the same first six characters. The authors' names are spelled out and in firstname lastname order. Only the first word of the title is capitalized, and the title is not in quotes. The title of the periodical is italicized, and the information about the article is complete so that the reader can locate it in the library. None of the punctuation is italicized or otherwise nonstandard.

For Books:

[<designator>]
<author list>. <title of book>. <publisher>, <year>.
[DOVE94]
Barbara Doveman. Will SNA Grow? Vista Press, 1994.

For Articles Included in a Volume Edited by Someone:

[<designator>]
<author list>. <article title>. In <editor list>, editors, <volume title>. <publisher>, <year>.
[DOVE92a]
Barbara Doveman and Sam Smith. Backbone networks. In Joseph Jones, editor, The Future of Wide-Area Networks, Computing Press, 1992.

Citing References in the Paper Text

For Citing a Reference in the Paper Text:

<author list> [<designator>]

According to Carrano, Helman, and Veroff [CARR93], establishing the correctness of an iterative algorithm can be done by showing each of the following four points to be true:

Citing Internet References

For Citing Internet Material in the Paper Text:

Use the same method as is used for citing a reference in the paper:

<author list> [<designator>]

According to Smith's recent Internet article [SMIT94], perpetual motion is a ...

Internet Citation in References or Bibliography:

[<designator>]
<author list>. <article title>, <year>. Internet: <show the system and directory>
[SMIT94]
Sam Smith. A case study of perpetual motion, 1994. Internet URL: http://www.myth.edu/perpetual/motion/

References

CARR93
Frank Carrano, Paul Helman, and Robert Veroff. Data Structures and Problem Solving with Turbo Pascal. Benjamin/Cummings, 1993.
GIBA88
Joseph Gibaldi, editor. Modern Language Association Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The Modern Language Association of America, 1988.