Skip to Main Content

Academic Integrity and Honor

Resources for faculty and students to guide academic integrity and plagiarism understanding

One way to prevent academic dishonesty is to know when to get help with the research process.  Here are some campus resources that you may want to consult when you find that you are stuck.

Otterbein Library, research services

Otterbein subject libguides

Otterbein One Search

  • This popular database is a great place to start your research because of the great variety of topics and resources included. You can find scholarly journal articles, popular magazine articles, and newspapers.

Plagiarism cartoon image

Unintentional Plagiarism

"Most current discussions of plagiarism fail to distinguish between:

  1. submitting someone else’s text as one’s own or attempting to blur the line between one’s own ideas or words and those borrowed from another source, and
  2. carelessly or inadequately citing ideas and words borrowed from another source.

Such discussions confuse plagiarism with the misuse of sources."  For the student: it is better to be marked down for inadequate citations than to be accused of cheating.  Citing incorrectly is better than not citing at all.

Five Types of Plagiarism

Type 1: Copy and Paste Plagiarism or Direct Plagiarism

When you copy a sentence, phrase, or paragraph word for word, but do not quote your source.

Type 2: Word Switch Plagiarism

When you rephrase a person's work and insert it into your own work without acknowledging its original source.  If you take a sentence from a source and change a few words without acknowledging your source, it is still plagiarism.

This is not paraphrasing. For information on how to correctly paraphrase, see When To Cite.

Type 3: Mosaic or Blending Plagiarism

When you: mix words or ideas from an unacknowledged source in with your own words or ideas; mix together uncited words and ideas from several sources into a single work; or mix together properly cited uses of a source with uncited uses.

Type 4: Insufficient Acknowledgement

When you correctly cite your source once, but continue to use the author's work with out giving additional proper citation.

Type 5: Self-Plagiarism

When you use a paper or assignment completed for one class to satisfy the assignment for a different class.  Even if you modify a previous paper or assignment, you must get permission from your professor/ instructor and correctly cite your previous paper.


Source: University of South Alabama