6 Plagiarism and Intellectual Output

Why is plagiarism such a big issue?

Plagiarism is a violation of academic integrity because it is considered unethical to take credit for someone else’s intellectual output. This applies even if you pay to use the original author’s work or receive permission from the original author to use their work. It even applies to reusing your own work without citing it.

What is included in intellectual output?

Intellectual output is the outward evidence of our creative processes. This evidence may come in the form of tangible products, such as written and spoken words, music and videos, movies, performances, artwork, photographs, graphs, tables, figures, diagrams, data, and computer code. Intellectual output also extends to ideas. For example, a specific method or model, the plot of a story, and the outline of an experiment are all ideas that qualify as intellectual output.

To avoid accidental plagiarism, you always need to give credit to the person whose work or idea you are using. This is accomplished by accurately quoting, properly paraphrasing, and correctly citing your sources of information.

Test Your Understanding

Now that you have a basic understanding of what plagiarism means, let’s see if you can figure out which of the following scenarios are examples of plagiarism.

Intellectual output includes both tangible products and ideas. In both cases, it is necessary to give credit to the original author through citation