Seminar in Ethics and Academic Integrity, University of Colorado at Boulder

Are Any of These Plagiarizing?*

1. Asking a friend to suggest changes or corrections in your essay.
2. Asking a friend to re-write your essay.
3. Asking a friend to search the Internet for sources you can use in writing a term paper.
4. Asking a friend to help you search the Internet for sources you can use in writing a term paper.
5. Reading someone else’s term paper and then writing your own using some of his/her ideas and copying part or all of his/her bibliography.
6. Listing books in your bibliography that you never read or used.
7. Brainstorming an assignment with other students and then each writing your own report.
8. Taking a term paper you wrote for one class and rewriting it for another class.
9. Taking a term paper you wrote for one class and turning it in for another class without rewriting it.
10. Copying a paragraph or excerpt from an Internet site without citing it, but identifying the source as one of your references in your bibliography..
11. Using a file of old papers to turn in a paper under your name.
12. Writing a paper with other students and then each person rewriting their own papers to make them just a little bit different.
13. Turning in a term paper purchased and downloaded from an Internet source.
14. Turning in a term paper downloaded from an Internet source, but obtained for free.
15. Hiring a tutor to help you learn to write better.
16. Hiring a tutor to help you rewrite your papers.
17. Hiring a tutor to rewrite your papers.
18. Using a portion of someone else’s computer program to write your own assigned program.

*Predominantly based on, and used with permission from Student Cheating and Plagiarism in the Internet Era: a Wake-Up Call by Ann Lathrop and Kathleen Foss. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited

Prepared by: Jeffrey T. Luftig, Ph.D. Leeds School of Business