Skip to Main Content

FCS 5240: Socio / Psychological Aspects of Dress

APA Style

Understanding Plagiarism

Here is Western Michigan University's current definition of plagiarism, adopted in 2016.

"Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s language, ideas, or other material without making the source(s) evident in situations where there is a legitimate expectation of original work.  Plagiarism does not occur when efforts to promptly identify sources by making source use apparent to the audience of the submitted material are obvious.  Plagiarism may not necessarily include mistakes in citation style.

A legitimate expectation of original work exists for numerous circumstances, including (but not limited to): scholarly writing, technical presentations and papers, conference presentations and papers, online discussion postings, grant proposals, patents, book and other manuscripts, theses and dissertations, class assignments, artistic works, computer code, algorithms, and other creative works.

This definition applies to the entire WMU community, which includes all faculty; students; staff; visiting faculty, scholars, administrators; and any other person governed by academic research and other policies of the University."

How to Write Well and Avoid Plagiarism

While the following videos (with sound) may be watched in any order, they are best seen in sequence, as the concepts explained in each build upon each other. Click on the "CC" button in each to see the closed captioned text.

  • Plagiarism Defined  Runtime: 01:35 min
    How does WMU define plagiarism, and in what situations is one expected to follow this definition?
  • Plagiarism: Why Does It Matter? Runtime: 03:02 min
    So why do we care about plagiarism? Is anyone really being harmed when we copy text (with or without attribution) from other writers?
  • Patchwriting - Some Examples Runtime: 02:27 min
    In which we see how verbatim text from one scholarly article is copied repeatedly in other scholarly articles over several years.
  • What Counts as Plagiarism? Runtime: 03:46 min
    This video addresses questions such as "How much do you need to change before it is not plagiarism?" and "How much material (or how many words) can I use without a citation?"
  • Writing Well (and Avoiding Plagiarism) Runtime: 10:22 min
    After all this talk about types of plagiarism and why graduate students copy sources, let's discuss ways that you can write well and avoid plagiarizing your sources in the process. For a nice set of guidelines, see Miguel Roig's "Avoiding Plagiarism" document on the web.
  • You Quote It, You Note It   
    Spend 10 minutes learning how to avoid plagiarism
  • Avoiding Plagiarism - Tutorial videos
    A series of videos and reading materials related to plagiarism and ethical use of sources in research. Click on the menu icon (to the right of "Balancing Act") to see the list of videos, and to select individual videos to watch. 

Graduate Students and Source Text Use Runtime: 06:34 min
What does the literature tell us about graduate students and the issues they face writing theses and dissertations and working with sources?

Non-native Speakers and Source Text Use Runtime: 02:30 min
A number of published research studies in the fields of writing composition and second-language instruction that seem to indicate that non-native English speakers, that is students and researchers for whom English is a second language, may have more issues with plagiarism than native English speakers.

APA Video Tutorials

Citation software

Quick Citation Formatting in Databases. Many databases allow you to format citations into various writing styles. When available, look for the wording “cite” or “cite now,” or see if it is an option after clicking on “save, print, email.”

Research & Instruction Librarian

Profile Photo
Brad Dennis
Librarian:
Phone: 269-387-1581
Office: Waldo 1012