When Quoting

You need quotation marks, a reference, and an item in your bibliography.

Example:

“Information literacy is the natural extension of the concept of literacy in our information society. Information literacy is the catalyst required to transform the information society of today into the learning society of tomorrow.” (Bruce, 2002)

Bibliography entry (APA Style):
Bruce, C. (2002). Information literacy as a catalyst for educational change: A background paper. White Paper Prepared for Unesco, the US National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, and the National Forum on Information Literacy, for use at the Information Literacy, Meetings of Experts, Prague, the Czech Republic, 1-17.

When Referring to an Author’s Work

You don’t need quotation marks, but you do need a reference, and an item in your bibliography.

Example:

Maughan (2001)demonstrates that the information literacy gap in higher education is leaving university graduates devoid of the very skills they require to function well win the information workplace.

Bibliography entry (APA Style): Maughan, P. D. (2001). Assessing information literacy among undergraduates: A discussion of the literature and the University of California-Berkeley assessment experience. College & Research Libraries, 62(1), 71-85.

Misrepresentation

The real problem is misrepresentation because it breaks all the rules for using other people’s work. A person’s words and ideas are considered to be the property of the person who originates them. Stealing a person’s words is similar to stealing somebody’s car and impressing your friends by pretending it’s yours. It’s theft, but more seriously, it’s misrepresentation.

Any time I leave the impression that the words or ideas I‘ve written are mine, when actually they came from someone else, I am plagiarizing.

Because passing off someone else’s words or ideas as your own is misrepresentation, it is viewed as academic fraud as well as academic *theft.

The penalties are severe – anything from a failed research paper to a failed course to expulsion from the institution. It’s that serious.

How do I know when I’ve become a plagiarist?

Some boundaries are obvious:

• If I copy material from a book or article, don’t use quotation marks and don’t provide a citation to the source, I am stealing someone else’s words and pretending they are mine.
• If I get someone else to write my paper or buy a paper from a commercial source or simply copy a whole paper off the Internet, I am clearly plagiarizing.

I Plagiarize if I Take Something Off the Internet?

Here you’re confusing access and plagiarism. Even if people give you permission to use their material, using it without indicating the source makes it look like it’s your material. That’s plagiarism.

What If I Change a Few Words to Make It My Own?

Yes, you are still plagiarizing. The structure of the original is still there – the form of the paragraph, the arrangement of sentences, the ideas in their sequence. You may change some of the words, but you are stealing the structure.

What If I Use Another Author’s Idea Without Using Their Words?

Only if you create a citation to show that the idea is not yours but came from this other author. Otherwise, you are stealing an idea.

Intellectual Property

We’ve looked at some examples, but what ties them all together? It’s the idea of Intellectual Property. What comes out of my mind and is communicated to others remains my property. If you use my intellectual property as if it were your own, you are plagiarizing.

What Do I NOT Have To Cite?

• Your own ideas
• Your own analysis/evaluation of other people’s ideas (once you have provided citations for the ideas themselves)
• Common knowledge – knowledge that you find in several sources that are not themselves depending on a single earlier source

Tricky Situations

You are planning to use some material from a source, but you would rather not quote from it. Is paraphrasing OK?

This depends on what you mean by “paraphrasing.” By its etymology – “para” meaning “with” and “phrase” meaning (well) “phrase” - a paraphrase is a phrase by phrase rewriting of text into your own words (or mostly your own words).

Example of Poor Paraphrasing (Plagiarism)

Original:

To argue that information literacy should have a higher place within academia is certainly not new, nor is the despair mainy information professionals feel about the disparity between the needs for an infomrationally literate populace and the amount of education in information use the are able to provide.

Poor Paraphrase:

To say that information literacy should be higher in university circles is not new, and neither is the unhappiness many professionals of information have when they see the difference between the needs for an information literate population and the amount of training in information they can give.

Study both for a few seconds. The paraphrase you looked at is just a doctored version of the original, changed a bit so it looks like something different. But the word order, paragraph structure, and even some of the actual words are the same. That’s plagiarism. Even with the changes, the whole paraphrase is still 80% the intellectual property of the original author.

How do you avoid the paraphrasing trap?

Simple. Don’t paraphrase – Interpret!

Gormezano & Rockwell (2016) argue that, in absence of sufficient seals, polar bears are finding land animas as a source for food.

(This is an interpretation of the source. It demonstrates understanding rather than copying the original. There is no hint of stealing words from the source—you are simply presenting the authors’ central idea in your own words.)

What’s the Difference Between Paraphrasing and Interpreting?

• Paraphrasing: Rewriting the original phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence.
• Interpreting: Reading the text, stepping back, and asking, “What is this person saying?” Interpretation focuses on what the author said phrase by phrase, but what the author meant overall.

Examples:

Your friend says:

“I haven’t eaten for a long time, so why don’t we stop at McDonalds?”

Someone nearby asks, “What does he want?”

• Paraphrase: “He hasn’t had a meal for awhile and wants to go to McDonalds.” (Changes words but not basic structure. No attempt to interpret)
• Interpretation: “He’s hungry and wants to get a burger.” (Gets at underlying meaning)

When Should You Quote Instead of Interpret?

Sometimes, the source you are reading expresses an idea better than you could. What’s wrong with using the writer’s words?

There’s nothing wrong with using someone else’s words, as long as you quote them and create a citation (note or reference) to the source.

A better approach is to combine quotation and interpretation:

“Quotation, blah, blah.” Brown goes on to argue that the real answer to this problem is…etc. (Brown 2004)

This method keeps your writing original while properly crediting the source.

Research Papers Should Focus on Interpretation

Most academic writing—especially at the graduate level—relies more on interpretation than direct quotation. For example:

At the graduate level, it appears that students prefer integrating their information literacy assignment work with their own projects and that they value face to face interaction with their information literacy instructors. (Barton et al., 2002; Turnbull et al., 2003)

By prioritizing interpretation over paraphrasing or excessive quoting, you can develop your own analytical voice while maintaining academic integrity.

Practice Exercise

Are the following plagarism or not?

Example 1

Original source:
The effort required to provide online information literacy instruction is intense.

Your paper:
The effort required to provide online information literacy instruction is intense.

Example 2

Original source:
The effort required to provide online information literacy instruction is intense.

Your paper:
Smith (2006, p.42) argues that providing online courses in information literacy is hard work.

Example 3

Original source: The effort required to provide online information literacy instruction is intense.

Your paper: The work needed to provide online information literacy teaching is intense.