DIY Examples

Indicate whether the following approaches to research are likely to lead to plagiarism, are general academic dishonesty, are neutral or are likely to lead to original work.

1. Turning in a paper you wrote for another class

2. Turning in your friend’s paper from last year

3. Buying a paper that was written by someone else

4. Writing the whole paper based on one or two sources but including more sources in the bibliography (i.e., citing sources you did not use in the paper or even consult)

5. Approaching research with a goal of finding the right answer

6. Assuming someone else has already answered the question you’re researching

7. Using long quotes that you don’t relate back to your topic, just to fill up space and meet the page minimum

8. Ignoring sources that disagree with your point of view

9. Only reading enough sources to meet the minimum number of sources for your paper

10. Reading your sources and writing your paper at the same time

11. Printing out online sources and highlighting them as you read

12. Taking notes while you read that you can refer to when you’re ready to write

13. Copying text from an online source and pasting it into your paper, then changing the words that the author used

14. Reading a source and then putting the information into your paper by changing it into your own words without citing it

15. Using the same evidence or reasoning that your source used without citing it

16. Researching and writing your paper in one or two days when you were given two or more weeks to work on it

17. Using quotes from sources without analyzing them to show how they relate to your thesis

18. Thinking about your paper even when you’re not physically working on it

19. Using only one kind of source in your paper (i.e., only websites or only magazine articles, etc.)

20. Using sources that you know may not be very good quality just because they agree with our point of view or they are easier to find

21. Doing your research in a wide range of sources (e.g., books and websites and magazine articles and journal articles, etc.)

22. Continuing your research until you find something interesting that you really want to write about