Avoiding Plagiarism
Write Better Papers in APA, Chicago, and Harvard Citation Styles
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Chapter 2 - Strategies for Avoiding Plagiarism
What is Plagiarism?
Plagiarism refers to the use of others' ideas and presenting them as your own. It is intellectual theft and is considered a serious academic offence. The most common type of plagiarism is a direct "Copy and Paste" action. For instance, copying the content from a book and making a book of a similar title, is definitely an act of plagiarism. But how about copying just a sentence or two? Well, if you cite my sentences properly using a quotation format, there should be no problem.
The smart students will put up their hands and ask, "Dr. Wong, what if I paraphrase your sentence?" In my opinion, this is still reverse engineering because you are taking another's thoughts as your own. Remember, your professor is interested in seeing your critical thinking skills so instead of paraphrasing others' points, why don't you critique their thoughts and add in your own analysis? The brave students would even ask me questions like "Dr. Wong, how many words can I copy directly without being caught by those anti-plagiarism software?" My answer: 5 words.
While some students intentionally plagiarize others' work to cheat, I believe that there are many students out there who commit plagiarism and related academic offences unintentionally; that is, they commit plagiarism simply because they do not know how to write properly. Common mistakes include:
1. Incorrect in-text citations and references: the publication year is wrong and the author's name is misspelled.
2. Incomplete in-text citations and references: this often happens in a long paragraph where multiple thoughts from different authors are mentioned.
3. Lack of reference: student forgets to provide the corresponding reference after including the in-text citation.
4. Assemblage: student spends too much time in making reference to others' thoughts (although with proper citing/referencing) and makes little original contribution.
5. Self-plagiarism: students recycle their own papers that were previously submitted in other classes.
What you need to remember is that professors have tools to spot out plagiarism not only in paper assignments, but also in discussion board contributions. Your work will be compared to millions of web pages and homework database among most universities in just a matter of seconds, so do not risk committing plagiarism!
Chapter 8 - Harvard Style
The Harvard Referencing Style (a.k.a. author-date style or Parenthetical referencing) is a citing and referencing method that is very popular among academics in Australia, UK and South Africa. Contrary to believe, this referencing style is not developed or endorsed by Harvard University, although it was originated from the referencing technique used by Edward Laurens Mark (1847-1946) who was the Hersey professor of anatomy and director of Harvard's zoological laboratory. In fact, MBA students from Harvard Business School are asked to follow the HBS Citation Guide that is based on the Chicago style.
To learn more about the history of the "Harvard" style, see the article titled "The "Harvard System": A mystery dispelled" that is written by Eli Chernin in Vol. 297 (22 Oct 1988), page 1062-1063 of British Medical Journal.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/pdf_extract/297/6655/1062
Unlike the APA and Chicago styles that are being centrally managed and updated by their corresponding publisher, the Harvard style has no publisher. It has been gradually evolved since 1881 (when Professor Mark first used it in his journal article) as this style started to gain acceptance among the academic communities around the world. As a result, each university may have its own interpretation of the Harvard style and my opinion is that you should simply follow the version that your university or journal is suggesting. In this section, I'm going to show you the Harvard style that is used by Imperial College London in UK, so don't be alarmed to find slight difference of what I'm writing as compared to those that you find on the Internet. See more at: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/library/subjectsandsupport/referencemanagement/harvard
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About the Book
Writing scholarly papers is a tough business; when you plagiarize someone else’s work, you not only risk getting a bad grade—you could be expelled. Avoiding Plagiarism helps students to write better papers and avoid mark deduction due to improper citing and referencing. Examples using APA, Chicago, and Harvard citation styles are examined and made easy.
Advance Praise for Avoiding Plagiarism
“Unlike other resources in this area, Dr. Wong’s book provides additional information on tools for similarity detection and citation generation. Educators will find this book a valuable resource.”
—Professor Wing Lam, Dean, U21Global, Singapore
“Knowing how to cite and reference are fundamental skills which are missing in many graduate students. This book provides those ‘missing’ skills in an easy, innovative and entertaining way.”
—Richard Anthony, Indonesia
“This book provides useful information considering all the queries that may pop-up in a student’s mind while attempting to provide citations and references.”
—Tasneem Tailor, India Dr.
About the Author
Ken K. Wong is a Marketing Professor at U21Global where his success in teaching was recognized with Faculty Excellence Awards in 2008- 2010. Dr. Wong is also affiliated with the University of Toronto. He is the author of Approved Marketing Plans, and CRM in Action.