What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the “act or an instance of copying or stealing another’s words or ideas and attributing them as one’s own.” (Excerpted from Black’s Law Dictionary, West Group, 1999, 7th ed., p. 1170). This is the definition used in the Western’s Scholastic Discipline policies.

Plagiarism can be intentional or unintentional, but it is ultimately a Scholastic Offence. The consequences of committing a scholastic offence may vary, from potentially re-submitting an assignment, receiving a failing grade, to even suspension or expulsion. Therefore it is critical to appropriately attribute ideas and content during your research process and assignments to avoid incurring any penalties.

What Does Plagiarism Look Like?

We can consider plagiarism a theft of knowledge, where either people, institutions, or companies use knowledge without proper permission or attribution to the original knowledge steward(s) or creators.^[1]

There are numerous ways plagiarism can occur both in the academic or professional world, such as:

• Copyright infringement, as in Canada, knowledge is seen as belonging to an individual, with copyright laws protecting the individual’s intellectual property by them exclusive control over how their original work is used, copied, and distributed.^[2]
  • Faculty plagiarism: intellectual theft among academic researchers can occur when work or data is improperly cited, referenced, or stolen (such as a University of Guelph Botany professor fabricating results, plagiarizing other research work, and having conflict of interest with related sponsor parties)
  • Social media scraping: resharing social media content under a different account to turn a profit, and often without crediting the original creator (see how Reddit looks to stop AI companies from scraping its data)
  • Image use: most images online are not freely available to use depending on their copyright information, and must be carefully reviewed to cite properly (have you seen one of the biggest lawsuits on copyright infringement use between Getty Images and this professional photographer?)
• Theft of Indigenous Knowledge, as Indigenous Knowledge and ways of knowing are not always protected under intellectual property rights
  • Biopiracy: when Indigenous Knowledge is controlled for profit through instances of monopolies or patents (can be referred to as scientific colonialism, an example seen in patents for local antimalaria plants in French Guiana)
  • AI-generated ‘Indigenous Knowledge’: using Generative AI to unjustly generate content of Indigenous ceremony, language, medicines, art, and culture (such as this call to protect Indigenous intellectual property from ‘cultural theft and disregard’)

It is your responsibility to always properly attribute any information you receive or use whenever conducting your own work!

Resources

For Students

Western Guides and Tutorials

• Western Libraries’ Style Guides can help you cite using APA, Chicago, MLA, or any other citation style you need for your assignments.
• Citation management software can help you track sources, and automatically format bibliographies, footnotes, endnotes or in-line citations. A tutorial chapter on citation management software is available if you are learning how to use these applications!
• Western Libraries’ Paraphrasing tutorial series can help you avoid plagiarism in your research writing.
• Western’s Writing Support Center can help you meet the writing expectations of post-secondary education with resources, modules, and advisors.
• Office of the Ombudsperson may provide information and support with issues related to academic integrity.
• Copyright@Western has services and resources to help you understand what copyright means as a student and researcher.
• For Graduate students: Western’s Academic Integrity Module milestone and Provisional Guidance for the use of Generative AI in Graduate Studies are both incredible resources to guide and answer questions to your academic research journey at Western University.

As always, contact us for any questions or concerns you might have!

Other Helpful Resources

• Harvard University: What constitutes plagiarism?
• Indigenous Perspectives on Academic Integrity (Keeta Gladue, Cree and Métis, University of Calgary)
• McGill University: Fair Play Guide for Integrity and Plagiarism
• Open Policy Finder (note: can help you look up policies of academic journals for use in your work)
• Simon Fraser University Library: Avoiding plagiarism
• Simon Fraser University Library: Indigenous Knowledges and copyright
• University of Toronto Writing Advice: How Not to Plagiarize
• UWaterloo Libraries: Avoid Plagiarism

For Course Instructors

• Western’s Centre for Teaching and Learning page on Academic Integrity includes Resources for Faculty and Graduate Teaching Assistants.
• You may browse Western’s eLearning Toolkit to find tools to help support academic integrity in your courses.
• Copyright@Western has services and resources to help you understand what copyright means as a faculty member and researcher.

If you have additional questions, please contact Western Libraries for more support!