Research Guides: Plagiarism Prevention & Awareness: Home

What is Academic Dishonesty?

Academic dishonesty takes place when unapproved materials are utilized and deliberate attempts are made to mislead others concerning your academic knowledge and skills.

It’s academic dishonesty:

if you are using unapproved materials such as smartphones during a test to check for answers
if you are copying the work of others, intentionally or unintentionally
when you invent or falsify data, lab results or images
if you doing the academic work of others
if you are buying or selling academic work on the web or from other students

Plagiarism is a specific form of academic cheating. Plagiarism is submitting another's work without properly crediting the author.

What Is Plagiarism?

According to the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary plagiarism is “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own.” Plagiarism also means:

Submitting someone else's work (in whole, part, or paraphrase) as one's own without fully and properly crediting the author;
Submitting as one's original work materials obtained from an individual or agency;
Submitting as one's own original work material that has been produced through unacknowledged collaboration with others.

What is Fabrication?

Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.

Examples of fabrication include:

making up data for grant funded research
altering research results to comply with research findings
tampering with image panels in labs
making up data in research charts, graphs and illustrations

What is Falsification?

Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.

Examples of falsification include:

presenting false transcripts or references in an application for a program or grant
submitting work that’s not yours or not crediting another researcher
falsely reporting data or altering the results of tests
mislabeling or reusing images used in research results

What Is Online Cheating?

Online cheating s another form of plagiarism and includes:

Cutting and pasting someone else's Web work and submitting it as your own;
Downloading essays, papers, speeches etc. from the Web and turning them in as your own;
Buying essays, papers, speeches etc. from the Web and turning them in as your own.

Self-plagiarism & aggregate

Other forms of plagiarism are self-plagiarism and aggregate.

If you recycle a paper you wrote from a previous class, make little to no changes, and fail to cite yourself, you actually are plagiarizing yourself.

Aggregating, on the other hand, occurs when you properly cite all your sources, but there is little to no original material from you.