SUUIntegrity Avoiding Plagiarism: Citing Sources

When Should I Cite a Source?

Citing your sources is perhaps the easiest way to avoid accidental plagiarism, because you are acknowledging that you adapted someone else’s ideas or borrowed someone else’s words. This allows your reader to locate the sources you are using to support your claims and to read more about it. To do it right, you might want to include in-text citations and your reference list or bibliography. Do not feel bad if you are not sure how to do it right. You will eventually get this right once you take the time to learn how to do it properly.

However, there are some exceptions. Keep in mind that common knowledge does NOT need to be cited. General common knowledge is the facts most people know, for example, the capital of a country or important historical events. This might also vary depending on your audience because in every field or discipline, there is basic knowledge that everybody is supposed to know.

Always check with your instructor and follow the rules. Use credible sources in your academic papers, and give credit to the authors. There are different ways to cite from field to field, and the rules might be different from one academic course to another.

See this handout that compares different types of citations. You can cite books, articles, webpages, etc., but in some fields they even want you to cite conversations you had with other people.

Do I Have to Cite My Own Work?

Quoting words or borrowing ideas without reference to the author is a problem, even if YOU happen to bethe author! As a general rule, it is not acceptable to submit the same paper for different classes, use sections of your previous work for a new project or submit the same research article to a different journal. To do any of these, though there are conditions under which some version of reprinting or adaptation of your own work might be acceptable, is self-plagiarism. Learn more about the complicated issue of self-plagiarism. Talk to your faculty mentor about what self-plagiarism means in your discipline's professional practices.

How Do I Know If I've Plagarized?

There are a few key questions you should ask yourself to determine if you have plagiarized. Did you . . .

copy word-for-word from your source?
paraphrase without giving credit to the source?
give credit to the source[s] but the majority of your paper is from said source[s]
self-plagiarize?

Still unsure? If your instructor has set the assignment to be analyzed by Unicheck and allowed student reviews, you can use the originality report feature prior to submitting a final draft. There are also various other free plagiarism checkers available online.