Helen C. Harton Professor of Psychology Baker 357

Why do we care about proper attribution of ideas?  It’s stealing  It’s lazy  It doesn’t make an original contribution  It doesn’t show understanding or processing  It may be misleading to the reader— making the literature seem stronger or weaker than it is  It may even be illegal (copyright infringement)

What is plagiarism?  “…plagiarism is defined as the process of stealing or passing off as one’s own the ideas or words of another, or presenting as one’s own an idea or product which is derived from an existing source” (UNI Policies, Chapter 3,

What are its consequences?  At a minimum, failing the paper  Potentially being asked to leave your program and/or the university  Legal consequences

What products does it apply to?  Manuscripts submitted for publication  Theses, dissertations, and research papers  Conference presentations  Papers or presentations for class  Thesis, dissertation, and research proposals  Take home tests  Any other assignment or product

Plagiarism of text  Always use quotation marks and page numbers for direct quotes  Sometimes even using one word without quotation marks can be plagiarism!  Don’t just thesaurus in new words or move things around

Plagiarism of ideas  Always give credit to others’ ideas  If the idea for a project came from somewhere else (discussion section of another article, personal communication), cite that as well  If you’re collaborating, make ownership/authorship clear early in the process (but leave room for changes)

Self-plagiarism  Republishing a paper or just adding data  Cutting a paper up and publishing small parts  Re-using your old text  Double-dipping (turning in parts of the same paper for more than one class/project)

How can I avoid plagiarism?  Intention doesn’t matter  Don’t just have strings of quotes  Read, then pause before writing  Make sure you understand what you’ve read  Make notes on the article More important, more extreme  Outline your article and then fill in More important attitudes are more extreme. ○ College students and elementary school children on school proposals (Harton & Latane, 1998) ○ When judging others (Justin, 2000) ○ Believe others will do too (McConahay & Costa, 2004)

Other unethical writing practices  Citing something you haven’t read or have only read the abstract of  Citing secondary sources  Selective reporting of literature  Selective reporting of method or results  Submitting things without co-author approval

Who owns the data/product?  Professor  Student  Agency/Sponsor

Who should be an author?  Substantial contributions YES—Forming hypotheses or theses, designing the study, conducting or interpreting the results, writing the paper NO—Collecting or entering data, recruiting participants, suggesting analyses or sources But it depends  In order of contribution

When you have doubts or questions…  ASK!  Look at guidelines in your discipline  Resources will be posted with these Powerpoints