Plagiarism

Plagiarism is representing someone else's intellectual property as your own. For students at Walden, you are most commonly at risk of plagiarizing when you fail to adequately cite the original source material from which you took words and ideas. The integrity of your work is also compromised when you rely too heavily on secondary sources and direct quotes.
The Walden Writing Center is committedto assisting students learn and utilize effective source citation practices and paraphrasing skills.
If you submit a paper to the Walden graduate writing tutors for review, your tutor may run a check using the methods above if he or she identifies plagiarized material. The tutors will provide you feedback on any problems and advise you about how to correct the problem. Additional occurrences ofplagiarism in work submitted to the Writing Center may be reported to the Office of Academic Integrity and Student Affairs, per university policy.
Because of the importance of academic integrity in final capstone studies, and given that the dissertation editors have limited contact with students drafting their proposals, the editors reserve the right to copy your committee chair on messagesregarding plagiarism findings so the chair can guide you in making revisions to avoid academic integrity violations in future drafts.
A successful paraphrase is
* Your own explanation or interpretation of another person's ideas
* An effective way to restate, condense, or clarify another author's ideas while also providing credibility to your own argument or analysis
A successfulparaphrase is not
* The switching out or changing around of a few words in an author's sentence(s) for use in your paper
* Failure to acknowledge (through an in-text citation or direct quotes) the outside source from which you obtained your information or ideas.
* Exception: When paraphrasing, you do not have to directly cite common knowledge. Common knowledge simply means thatthis information is widely known and can be found in multiple places. For example, writing that Ronald Reagan was a U.S. Republican president would be considered common knowledge, so it would not need to be cited. However, when in doubt, it is always better to cite than run the risk of plagiarism.
* Acknowledging the author in an in-text citation but failing to include quotation marksaround any terms or phrasing that you have borrowed from the author
Note that any of the unsuccessful elements of paraphrasing are considered plagiarism in your essay, even if these paraphrasing missteps are unintentional.
Effective Strategies for Successful Paraphrasing:
1. Reread the original passage you wish to paraphrase, looking up any words you do not recognize, until you think youunderstand the full meaning of and intention behind the author's words.
2. Next, cover or hide the passage. Once the passage is hidden from view, write out the author's idea, in your own words, as if you were explaining it to your instructor or classmates.
3. After you have finished writing, check your account of the author's idea against the original. While comparing the two, askyourself the following questions:
1. Have I accurately addressed the author's ideas in a new way that is unique to my writing style and scholarly voice
2. Have I tried to replicate the author's idea or have I simply changed words around in his/her original sentence(s)?
4. Next, look for any borrowed terms or particular phrases you have taken from the original passage.Enclose these terms and phrases in quotation marks to indicate to your readers that these words were taken directly from the original text.
5. Last, include a citation, which should contain the author's name, the year, and the page or paragraph number (if available), directly following your paraphrase.
This exercise is designed to help you improve your paraphrasing skills. You'll also get...