Research Process: A Step-By-Step Guide: Plagiarism

Plagiarism is using someone else's words, art, data, or ideas and passing them off as your own.​ Cutting and pasting is so easy that many people plagiarize without meaning to.

Self-plagiarism happens when you submit your own paper in more than one course without permission of the instructors.

How is this plagiarism? An important part of academic honesty is that your writing should reflect what you learned in a specific class. The point of college is to acquire knowledge, and your education is an investment in you. Don't cheat yourself.

• Submit someone else's work as your own.
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• Buy a paper from a papermill, website, or other source.
   
• Cut and paste together phrases, ideas, and sentences from a variety of sources to write an essay
   
• Copy words, art, or data from someone else's work--published or unpublished--without giving the original author credit.

Graphic created by Andrea Lam

Plagiarism is adapted and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License from the "Plagiarism Research Guide" by the San Jose State University Library.