This note seeks to address the dangerous misunderstanding EULER and EUCLID instructors often notice as to what constitutes plagiarism vs acceptable use of third-party text.
For instance, suppose we find this sentence in a paper (in bold):
The mechanisms of how resilience works generally imply intrinsic complex feedback loops of the systems; such loops absorb the external impacts and distribute them through the different elements that conform to the system.1
This sentence does have a footnote reference, but this does not make it acceptable to use this text in your own text! Any of this kind of unwarranted cut and paste, even with a reference, will make the entire assignment unacceptable.
To be acceptable (up to 14%), the use of third-party text must:
- Be clearly introduced as a citation/quote
- Be justified (meaning you have a good reason to use it) because:
- It is a primary source (articles of a treaty for instance)
- It is an authority (comment by recognized scholars or experts)
- It is an illustration of what is being discussed (news)
For the same text, if the student wrote:
According to a landmark paper by Gonzalez and colleagues:
[in Quote style paragraph] The mechanisms of how resilience works generally imply intrinsic complex feedback loops of the systems; such loops absorb the external impacts and distribute them through the different elements that conform to the system. 1
This statement confirms that…
This is case, a student can use third-party text because it is not merely ‘reused’ in the text but clearly a citation that has a reason to be there.
Students should remember that this can be done from time to time (once or twice per page) and only when citing something really interesting or authoritative… If this is done right, the plagiarism rate in Grammarly can be 25% and still be fine, but if text is used without a good reason (first example), even 14% plagiarism would not be acceptable…
Another option is for a student using a source to comprehensively rephrase/rewrite the sentence, and this must be done by using a clearly different set of words/structures… A footnote reference to provide support for the information and source is still called for.
