Learn more to avoid this serious offence
What is plagiarism?
Dalhousie University defines plagiarism as "the submission or presentation of the work of another as if it were one's own."
Plagiarism is a serious academic offence. A finding of plagiarism may result in a failing grade of an assignment or course or, if very serious, suspension or expulsion from the university. In fact, if plagiarism is discovered after a student has completed his or her studies, and the penalty results in that student no longer meeting the requirements of a degree that has been awarded, the university may rescind that degree.
Some examples of plagiarism:
- Failure to attribute authorship when using sources such as written or oral work, computer codes/programs, artistic or architectural works, scientific projects, performances, web page designs, graphical representations, diagrams, videos, and images.
- Downloading all or part of the work of another from the Internet and submitting as one's own.
- The use of a paper prepared by any person other than the individual claiming to be the author.
Plagiarism is committed when you do not acknowledge using someone else's:
- words or phrases
- ideas or thoughts
- term paper
- recording
- images
- computer code
- experiment results
- lecture content
- falsified data, citations or other text
- OR your own previously submitted work
Plagiarized materials can come from:
- books
- journal articles
- CD's
- encyclopedias
- web pages
- online term papers
- email or listservs
- talks or lecture
