Plagiarism

Introduction

As defined by Merriam-Webster, plagiarism, is:

• to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
• to use (another's production) without crediting the source
• to commit literary theft
• to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

We can all likely agree that plagiarism, in all forms, is bad. General Assembly has a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism. It makes sense: don't cheat off of your neighbor during a written assessment, don't pay someone to complete your project for you, and don't copy someone else's lab and submit it under your name.

However, the line separating what is plagiarism from what isn't plagiarism can get blurry. When working in a collaborative environment where many people are exchanging ideas and code, how do we differentiate between plagiarizing someone's work and genuine teamwork?

Plagiarism

For our purposes within SEIR, we say that plagiarism consists of two pieces:

1. Using someone else's work, and
2. Lying about this use.

In order to be considered plagiarism, something will usually need to meet both 1. and 2. This won't always be the case; we'll cover this later.

What do you mean when you say "using someone else's work?""

1. If you copy and paste anything, you are using someone else's work! If someone Slacks you an answer to a lab question, emails you some code, or you find code on StackOverflow and you copy and paste any part of this, you are using someone else's work.
2. If you read a sentence or code snippet and type nearly the exact same thing, you are using someone else's work! Changing variable names or rearranging the words in a sentence aren't sufficient to make work your own original work.
3. Anything that isn't your own original work is using someone else's work!

What do you mean when you say "lying about this use?"

1. If you do not provide credit to your source, you are lying about the use of the work. By putting your name on your presentation or pushing under your GitHub username, you're claiming credit for the work. By not acknowledging that the work is not your original work, you're effectively lying about who is responsible for it.

You mentioned that plagiarism consists of both using work and lying about it?

Yep! By providing credit to a classmate, an online resource, or a textbook, you're able to use someone else's work without plagiarizing. It's pretty easy. While bibliographies have a consistent format, we won't need that here. A small comment indicating the source of the code or information you used to solve the problem will be sufficient.

One caveat...

Under the current rules, it'd be possible for someone to copy every block of code from a classmate's lab and add a comment providing credit. Obviously, this isn't a desirable outcome for anybody involved.

One caveat to the above rules is that there might be cases when so much of your submission is "using someone else's work" that even with credit, we'd consider it to be plagiarized. There isn't some bright line test to identify how much is too much to be considered your own work... but if I read your lab and can notice that it reads nearly identically to another student's lab, that likely isn't a great sign.

What happens if I plagiarize?

It depends on a number of factors: Was it intentional? How substantial is the scope of the plagiarized work? Can it be easily rectified?

• In the "best case" scenario, you can resubmit the work with no penalty.
• In the "worst case" scenario, you will be removed from SEI.

Obviously there's a lot that happens in between those two extremes. Each instance of suspected plagiarism will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis in consultation with the Instructor Manager.

Now I'm a little nervous.

Don't be!

• Be sure to always provide credit to your sources.
• When in doubt, err on the side of providing credit.
• If you have any questions, ask an instructor!