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Plagiarism Scenarios

Scenario 1

John is researching job growth in the Midwest. He found a really nice chart on the internet which fit his topic. He copied and pasted it into his paper, but did not say where it came from.

Is this plagiarism, and why or why not?

Scenario 2

Sam also found a chart on a medical organization web page which compared the incidence of job related accidents to employee training. He found the title of the chart, the date, and knows the url (web address) for the chart. He put this information in his References page, and added the title and date information in parentheses under the chart.

Did he plagiarize by copying the chart into his paper?

Scenario 3

Tammy is reading an eBook about mental health issues and community services. She finds the perfect section, copies it and pastes it into her paper. She looks at the section and her paper again. Since the section from the book is 2 pages long, she decides she needs to indent it as a “long quote” since it is over 40 words long. She really likes the material in the book, and pulls another page out of it and also uses the “long quote” style. She makes sure she uses the author’s name, year and page numbers for her citations. Even though her paper is fairly brief, about 5 pages long, she can’t resist adding to her paper the last two paragraphs she found in the book which have a lot of punch. The paper is well into the 6th page, but she does not think her instructor will mind. Again, she is careful to use the long quote and properly cite it.

Tammy is so glad she found that particular book. It certainly helped her find a lot of information for her paper!

Is this plagiarism, and why or why not?

Scenario 4

Mary is desperate. Her husband is in the hospital after he fell from their roof (which really needs repairs they have not been able to afford). Their baby sitter quit. Her sister has been kind and offered to take some time to watch the kids. Her sister’s time is limited, though, so Mary has to take more time to care for their 2 and four year old children. She has a paper due tomorrow and has not had a chance to do anything on it. Mary’s friend told her that there are papers available on the internet which are easy to find. Most are not too expensive, either, since money is an issue. Mary surfs the net and finds a really nice paper on her topic which is the history of the silicon chip in computers. She pays, downloads it, adds her name and class information, and turns it in on time. What a relief!

Is this plagiarism, why or why not?

Scenario 5

Tom is having a rough time writing. It just is not natural for him, and never was. He is ok with short sentences, and has found some good information. He knows he needs more, though. He finds some journal articles on the OCLS databases which look good. He knows that he can’t copy and paste a lot of information in any one part of his paper, so he finds a few sentences here and there and adds them to text. When he is finished, he forgets what articles he used. Oh well. He did not use THAT much from them. He re-reads his paper, and sees that the sentences he copied and pasted are longer and sound different from his own writing. Oh well. The paper is important, and it really needs to sound good!

Is this plagiarism, why or why not?

Scenario 6

Jess has plenty of time before her paper is due, much to her relief. She found some good journal articles through the OCLS journal databases as required. Great! While she is writing her paper, she uses some quotes, with the quotation marks, and then in parentheses adds the author’s name, date, and page like her APA Manual shows. She knows she should not directly quote all the research information she used in her paper. She decides to add information from the articles but just change a word here and there. That’s not quoting. She decides to add the author name and date in parentheses. Look at the original version and Jess’ version:

Original Source

BEING TIRED: PRODUCTIVITY'S #1 ENEMY: Take the time to implement strategies for avoiding burnout. Full Text Available Journal of Property Management. Jul/Aug2011, Vol. 76 Issue 4, p14-14. 1p.

APA References page citation (note differences from database citation)

Brecher, N. (2011). Being tired: Productivity’s # 1 enemy. Journal of Property Management, 76(4), 14. Retrieved from http://www.irem.org/resources/jpm

Is this plagiarism, why or why not?

Sarah Crume, OCLS Reference Librarian (6/27/13)