Plagiarism

Today we are going to talk briefly about plagiarism- not the stole-it-or-bought-it kind, but the gee-I-didn’t-know kind. 

One major issue with plagiarism is the confusion regarding common knowledge.  There is no real agreement on what common knowledge really means, so it is always best to err on the side of citation.  If you found it somewhere, say where.  For instance, I found this handy little chart here: http://library.csusm.edu/plagiarism/howtocredit/ but they mostly lifted their information from the Purdue OWL, which they tell you up front. 

When to give credit
(adapted from Avoiding Plagiarism by Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab)

Need to cite when	No need to cite when
referring to someone else’s ideas, opinions, or theories, such as by paraphrasing copying exact words reprinting or copying graphical elements such as diagrams, illustrations, maps, charts, and pictures using ideas from others given in conversation, interviews, correspondence (letters or email) or heard during lectures, speeches, and from media such as television and radio	using ideas, opinions, or theories that are genuinely original with you writing up your own experiment results including your own artwork or other original creation recording anecdotes about other people, in which those people remain anonymous using common knowledge according to accepted criteria