Plagiarism
Plagiarism is presenting someone else's words, ideas, or work as your own without proper attribution, regardless of whether the original was copied verbatim or paraphrased without credit.
Definition¶
Plagiarism is the act of using another person's words, ideas, research, or creative work without giving them appropriate credit, presenting the material as if it were your own original work. Plagiarism can be intentional (deliberate copying) or unintentional (forgetting to cite a source, or not understanding citation requirements).
Forms of Plagiarism¶
Verbatim plagiarism — copying text word-for-word without quotation marks and citation. The most obvious form.
Patchwriting — changing individual words while keeping the original sentence structure and sequence of ideas. Widely misunderstood as acceptable paraphrasing; most academic institutions treat it as plagiarism.
Idea plagiarism — presenting someone else's original argument, analysis, or interpretation as your own, even if you've rewritten it entirely in your own words without attribution.
Self-plagiarism — submitting your own previously published or submitted work as new work, without disclosure. Governed by institution-specific and publication-specific policies.
Mosaic plagiarism — piecing together phrases and ideas from multiple sources without attribution, creating the appearance of original writing.
Plagiarism and AI-Generated Text¶
Whether submitting AI-generated text constitutes plagiarism depends on context and institutional policy. The core plagiarism principle — presenting work as your own that isn't — applies when AI output is submitted as original writing. Many institutions treat it as a separate category of academic misconduct rather than plagiarism specifically, but the ethical problem is similar.
Detection¶
Plagiarism detection tools like Turnitin, Copyscape, and iThenticate compare submitted text against indexed databases of web content, academic publications, and previously submitted papers. They do not catch idea plagiarism — only textual similarity.