How do I borrow from a source without plagiarizing?
NOTE:
Assume that the paraphrase in each of the following questions is an
accurate rendering of the ideas contained in the original passage. Just
focus on whether the paraphrase violates the rules of academic
integrity.
1 / 5
Read the following brief excerpt taken from a journal article:
Officials
at Western Carolina University designed their year-old mandatory-leave
policy after struggling to help students with eating disorders who had
refused to seek appropriate treatment. So far administrators have not
had to remove a student, but Bill Haggard, the university's associate
vice chancellor for student affairs, says the policy gives
administrators "leverage to encourage students to get help."
"Separating a student from the institution would be a last resort," Mr.
Haggard said. "Our first mission would be to do all we could to help
the student."
Source: "Dismissed for depression." Eric Hoover. The Chronicle of Higher Education 52.29 (March 24, 2006): 6.
You write the following paraphrase. Have you correctly put the information into your own words?
Paraphrase:
In 2005, Western Carolina University set up a “last-resort” policy to
cope with students who have been diagnosed with serious mental
illnesses, such as eating disorders, but who won’t try to get medical
help. To date, the University has not chosen to suspend or expel any
student under this policy (Hoover 6).
What do you think? OK or plagiarism?
OK
Plagiarism
Original Passage:
Modern-day bloggers trace their antecedents back to Ice Age cave
painters and to the political pamphleteers of the early centuries of
the print revolution. In U.S. history, their ancestry can be seen in
the openly partisan press of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the
muckraking journalists of the progressive era and the rambunctious
hosts of mid- and late 20th-century talk radio. Now with an inexpensive
platform that was available to none of those ancestors, bloggers have a
unique ability to disseminate their messages — chatty or substantive,
informational or opinionated — in real time, 24/7, to an audience as
large and far-flung as a global computer network will allow.
Source: "Are blogs a passing fad or a lasting revolution?" Kenneth Jost and Melissa J. Hipolit. The CQ Researcher, June 9, 2006 Volume 16, Number 22, p. 42.
You paraphrase the source as follows:
In a way, blogging is not really a new thing. The Ice Age cave painters
and the hosts of talk radio can be seen as bloggers. However, with the
use of blogging software, today’s bloggers can disseminate their
messages as far as the computer network will allow.
What do you think? OK or plagiarism?
OK
Plagiarism
Original Passage:
Last week scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany announced
they would attempt to sequence the Neanderthal genome--the complete DNA
of the closest known relative to modern humans, a species that
disappeared from the Earth about 30,000 years ago. …What would they be
like? From their skeletons, we know they would be robust and
barrel-chested, with a heavy jaw and brow; from their caves it appears
they could use primitive tools and buried their dead. But they seem to
have lacked modern humans' capacity for abstract thought; although they
spread overland through the Middle East and Europe, they apparently
never crossed a body of water they couldn't see across. Anthropologists
are divided on whether they had language, and although they presumably
were able to breed with Homo sapiens, there's no clear evidence they
ever did.
Source: "Cavemen, Chimps And Us; What can we learn from Neanderthal genes?" Jerry Adler. Newsweek Vol.148, Iss. 4; pg. 48 July 31, 2006.
Paraphrase:
Scientists believe that the Neanderthals looked somewhat different from
modern humans. For one thing, they had a heavy jaw and brow. Although
they could use primitive tools, they were not able to think abstractly.
Some scientists believe that they could use language, while others
argue that they could not. Finally, “although they were able to breed
with Homo sapiens, there’s no clear evidence that they ever did” (Adler
48).
OK or plagiarism?
OK
Plagiarism
Original Passage:
For years researchers have debated whether smoking affects the lungs of
men and women differently. So far, there's been as much evidence
against a sex bias as for one. But that may be starting to change. In
the most compelling study on the topic to date, researchers determined
that women are twice as vulnerable to lung cancer as men but, in a
surprising twist, they die at half the rate of men. …The study showed
that both sexes tended to be in their late 60s when they received a
lung-cancer diagnosis but that the women usually had smoked
considerably less than the men. Still, at each stage of lung cancer,
the women lived longer than the men.
Source: "Lung Cancer and the Sexes." Christine Gorman. Time 168.4 (July 24, 2006): p64
Your paraphrase:
Until very recently, scientists have not been able to determine whether
there is any difference between male and female smokers in terms of
which of the sexes are more likely to contract lung cancer. The most
recent study has concluded that women are “twice as vulnerable” as
their male counterparts (Gorman 64). However, the same study also
indicates that the women diagnosed with lung cancer “lived longer than
the men” (Gorman 64)
OK or plagiarism?
OK
Plagiarism
Original Passage:
As the courageous behavior of passengers and crew members who battled
the four hijackers on the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on
Sept. 11, 2001, became public, some families grew troubled that four
former athletes who made phone calls from the plane — Todd Beamer, Mark
Bingham, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick — received almost all the
sunlight of media exposure. Many others aboard were left in shadow.
It's not that other victims' families discounted or resented the valor
of those men. But the families resisted early attempts by politicians
to honor only these four. There was concern that bravery aboard United
Airlines Flight 93 not be made into a kind of Olympic sport, where some
passengers received a gold medal for gallantry while others had to
settle for silver or bronze.
Source: "Paul Greengrass's Filming of Flight 93's Story, Trying to Define Heroics." Jere Longman, April 24, 2006. The New York Times n.p. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/movies/
Your paraphrase:
Some of the victims’ families of United Flight 93 resisted the early
attempts by American politicians to accentuate the valor shown by four
particular passengers, all four of whom were former athletes. These
families felt that all members of Flight 93 were equally deserving of
honor and that bravery in such a situation is not equivalent to the
kind of bravery exhibited in an athletic competition.