Based on the mission and philosophy of St. Vincent’s College, special emphasis is placed on academic honesty. Plagiarism, cheating, theft of College equipment, and all forms of academic dishonesty are subject to disciplinary action. Clear cases of academic dishonesty in any course will result in an “F” grade for that assignment, examination, or for the course itself. Dismissal from the College may be recommended. For any disciplinary action, the College affords a student the right to appeal.  

What Is Plagiarism? 

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines plagiarism in the following manner: To take (ideas, writings, etc.) from (another) and pass them off as one’s own.

What is Cybercheating? (Hint: It’s another form of Plagiarism)

• Cutting and pasting someone else’s webworm 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

(“Cybercheating,” courtesy of UMass Boston, Healey Library website)  

There are two other distinct types of plagiarism: intentional and unintentional; and both are subject to disciplinary action on behalf of the faculty of St. Vincent’s College!

Unintentional Plagiarism

Many students have unintentionally plagiarized materials, not realizing that by paraphrasing or re-wording someone else’s ideas is still (in fact) stealing the idea or concept of that other person. An example of unintentional plagiarism might be the following: 

If a student were to write in a history paper: “I have a vision that some day this country will stand up and put into practice the true definition of its belief that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’,” then that student would be plagiarizing Dr. King’s verbalized concepts – even though Dr. King’s exact wording had been altered.

The original content of the speech reworded above is as follows:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”  – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Intentional Plagiarism

An example of intentional plagiarism occurs when anyone – other than the originator of the idea – takes credit for creating the concept or idea. An example of intentional plagiarism would be cutting and pasting a paragraph from an online article into a research paper without citing the source in the text and references page of a paper. Another example would be “borrowing” another student’s research paper for a class project and submitting it to your professor for a grade as the original author of the paper.  

When you quote, paraphrase, or borrow someone else’s
ideas for a research paper you must cite your sources.
Careful documentation takes time and energy, but there’s
no ethical way to avoid it. 

How Can You Avoid Plagiarism?

Learn the basic rules for how to credit other people’s ideas and works (a.k.a. intellectual property) and then use those rules! The following rules are cited – with permission –  from the Manhattanville College website on plagiarizing:

Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing are three methods that allow you to ethically incorporate another author’s writing into your research, as long as you cite your sources accurately.

Remember these guidelines…

• Quotations must match the source word for word. They must be attributed to the original author.
• Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words. A paraphrase must be attributed to the original source.
• Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s). Summarized ideas must be attributed to the original source.

Turnitin detects plagiarism in college applications
Turnitin improves the student writing cycle by preventing plagiarism and providing rich feedback to students. This application checks for percent of originality (or similarity) of a student’s paper. If there is a low percent of originality, then the student is using documentation from other sources which Turnitin will find and highlight. If this documentation has not been cited, plagiarism has occurred.

Turnitin can be accessed through the Campus Portal in the Information Literacy section. You will need to login to the website. For first time users, you will need to create a username and password. Using Turnitin from the portal, the class id is 3633598 and the password is “stvcollege”. When using Turnitin for the instructor’s class, the instructor will provide a class id and password for his or her course. Once in Turnitin follow the instructions for How to submit a paper information sheet.