Plagiarism and Academic Integrity

Defining plagiarism. Quite simply, “plagiarism is failing to acknowledge the words, [materials] or ideas of another. . . [it can be] deliberate or accidental” (Tensen, 2004, Research Strategies for a Digital Age, p. 97).

Credit your sources. Plagiarism is a very serious academic offense. Whenever you use someone else's ideas or work in text, images, audio, or any other format, you must CREDIT YOUR SOURCES!

Do not copy sentence by sentence. If you copy information sentence by sentence from a source, altering or omitting some of the words, you can be plagiarizing.

Test your knowledge of academic integrity and plagiarism by accessing this tutorial.

Paraphrase carefully! When you create a paraphrase, you should read the original source and put it away. Then, write it out from scratch, creating each sentence and choosing your own words based on the context of your paper. For some excellent examples, check out Indiana University's: How To Recognize Plagiarism.

Types of materials Be aware that plagiarism is not limited to words only. It also applies to information in other formats such as images, audio files, movie clips, statistics, etc.

Academic Integrity at the University of Oklahoma (OU). Please make sure that you read the OU's Student's Guide to Academic Integrity.These rules govern all the work that you do as a student at the University, and ignorance of the rules is no excuse. You will be held accountable for the rules and policies that have been established regarding Academic Integrity.