Substantial Paper & Journal Note Guide: Plagiarism

There are many different definitions of plagiarism. Wikipedia defines it "as the wrongful appropriation and stealing and publication of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions and the representation of them as one's own original work."

Section 4(C)(3) of the  College of Law Honor Code prohibits plagiarism:

Plagiarism, which is the failure to properly credit the sources of words or ideas used in one’s written work, constitutes academic fraud and thus violates the Honor Code. What constitutes proper crediting of sources is left to the discretion of the course instructor, the publication editor supervising a student note, or the faculty sponsor of a substantial paper. Any questions about proper attribution should be raised with those persons. University of Arizona resources explaining plagiarism and how to avoid it are here.

• In order to avoid plagiarism, proper attribution must be given for ideas and language of others that are included in a student’s written work. Where attribution is absent, it is assumed that the student intends to represent the words and ideas as his own work, and the student will be responsible to bear the consequences for any resulting misrepresentation.
• In particular, verbatim repetition in student work of the words of another must, without exception, be indicated, for example by use of quotation marks, along with an appropriate citation to the source of the quotation.
• Where a student paraphrases the words of another, this must also be indicated, for example through appropriate punctuation, along with an appropriate citation to the source of the language paraphrased.

The College of Law Honor Code links to a University of Arizona site about avoiding plagiarism which provides advice for avoiding plagiarism and specific examples on how to properly quote, paraphrase, and cite the work of others. In addition, it links to additional resources on avoiding plagiarism. 

There are a number of excellent resources on how to avoid plagiarism in addition to those suggested in the Honor Code.

A frequently recommended book entitled Scholarly Writing for Law Students: Seminar Papers, Law Review Notes, and Law Review Competition Papers by Elizabeth Fajans & Mary R. Falk (KF 250.F35 2017) is available on reserve at the library circulation desk.

There are also a number of useful Internet guides:  

• Purdue Writing Lab on Plagiarism
• University of Madison-Wisconsin Writing Lab on Quoting and Paraphrasing

TurnItIn is plagiarism detection software used by some professors at the University of Arizona. Click here to see a video demonstration.

TurnItIn compares a student paper to a database of scholarly works and webpages, highlights passages in the paper that matches writings in the database, and creates an originality report. A professor who wishes to use TurnItIn to check for plagiarism must use an assignment dropbox in D2L with TurnItIn activated.

When creating the assignment dropbox, the professor has an option to allow students to view their originality reports.

A student wishing to use TurnItIn to check for plagiarism could ask her professor to create an assignment dropbox for a paper draft so she could check her paper before submitting the final draft. Anyone with questions about how to use TurnItIn can contact Sarah Gotschall at sgotscha@arizona.edu.