When conducting research, you must credit the sources you used which contributed to your final product. This attribution, or documentation, serves several purposes:
- It provides a way for your readers (or professor) to read more about your topic;
- It allows readers to evaluate the sources you used to reach a conclusion with which they may or may not agree; and
- Documentation is necessary so that you will not appear to be plagiarizing, or claiming as your own, someone else's work.
Documenting Sources
Documentation is given in the form of a bibliography, or list of sources (sometimes called "references") used; footnotes or endnotes (depending on documentation style) are often included as well. Parenthetical citations--brief notes in parentheses that direct the reader to citations in the bibliography--are given in the body of the paper and are used to attribute a direct quote or idea. A bibliography is found in the last pages of a research paper, article, book, etc., and should be a complete list of all sources the author used.
Avoiding Plagiarism
Ask yourself the following questions about everything you write:
For material that is not directly quoted:
- Does this material represent my ideas, and only my ideas?
- If this material is paraphrased or summarized from another source, have I documented the source from which I took the ideas?
- If this material is paraphrased or summarized from another source, have I used my own words to paraphrase, rather than simply rearranging the author's words?
For material that is directly quoted:
- If I have copied material word-for-word from another source, is that material either enclosed in quotation marks ("") or in the form of a block quote?
- If I have copied material word-for-word from another source, have I documented the source from which I took that quotation?
- If I have copied material word-for-word from another source, have I copied it exactly, including the punctuation?
For all material:
- Have I given enough information in my paper or project (including parenthetical and bibliographical citations) for someone else to find that source?
- Have I listed in my bibliography only those sources I have used in my paper or project (that is, not tried to "inflate" the bibliography by including sources that were not used)?
- Was each piece of information cited taken from the source to which it was attributed?
- Have I given credit for any graphical material (charts, graphs, tables, pictures, etc.) I may have used?
Be sure that you can answer yes to each of these questions before submitting an assignment.
