Preamble
The SGS academic programs include several and varied writing components for students to engage, reflect, and assimilate the prevailing literature while synthesizing original thoughts and ideas. Graduate programs and their courses are increasingly being delivered online, and the cultivation and dissemination of information requires rigorous compliance with academic standards for scholarship. Doctoral and master’s theses, capstone papers, manuscripts that are prepared for submission to peer-reviewed journals for publication, and graduate course assignments require substantial writing, and there is a need for guidelines to assist in their preparation and to understand what constitutes plagiarism.
Introduction
In addition to the SGU Plagiarism Policy, this guideline provides additional information on understanding, preventing, and detecting plagiarism, and on the penalties for plagiarism for students enrolled in graduate programs.
Need for a plagiarism guideline
Graduate programs and their constituent courses require a broad array of writing assignments, from reports to dissertations. This guideline provides an adjunct to the SGU Plagiarism Policy to provide support for graduate students to express their own thoughts, ideas, and analysis.
Understanding What is Plagiarism
It is true that scholars at all levels depend on the work of those who came before them, as they seek to critique, analyze, or incorporate that work into their own. However, there is a clear difference between such use when it is properly cited and using someone else’s ideas or words without providing the necessary credit. The latter is always considered plagiarism. It should be noted that even when a graduate student is asked to paraphrase someone else, that does not mean simply changing a few words in a sentence, but thoughtfully reconstructing the idea or argument (while still giving proper credit to its source).
Preventing Plagiarism
Scholarship often involves building on the work of others; however, it also requires students to be very clear about where they originally found that work. The way to do this effectively is through one of 5 approved citation formats (see thesis guide for information on approved formats). The 5 pre-defined citation formats include: Vancouver, Harvard, Chicago, American Psychological Association (APA), or Modern Language Association (MLA). Students should check with their instructor/Chair of their Supervisory Committee as to which citation format is most appropriate for a particular assignment. It is crucial for students to familiarize with the styles of referencing used in their courses or for the submission of their original work to international journals for publication. International journals use different citation formats, and for the student’s work to be acceptable, the citation format of the journal to which the work is intended to be submitted must be adhered to for all references cited in the bibliography and in the text.
Checking for Plagiarism
It is always the graduate student’s responsibility to comply with the SGU Policy on Plagiarism by ensuring that written assignments unambiguously attribute the ideas, words, sentences, and arguments that they borrow to their sources. To this end, many instructors will allow students to use technological means (i.e. software applications such as TurnItIn®) to check assignments prior to submission. Students are strongly encouraged to use such tools. If a student is unsure about appropriate citation methods or has any questions about the academic honesty policy, it is their responsibility to seek guidance from the instructor or another professional source.
Using Turnitin
Turnitin is a program that checks submissions for originality. It searches through its database of published texts, webpages, and student assignments for content with a significant match to the current submission.
Turnitin does not teach students when or how to cite sources, but it can alert them to potential problems with their citations, enabling them to correct and resubmit the assignment.
The Turnitin Similarity Report
Instructors may allow the student to submit a draft assignment in Turnitin before submitting the final version. This submission will generate a ‘Similarity Report’ that the student can use as a guide for revising the assignment.
- The Turnitin Similarity report is color-coded.
- The following is a guide to reading the Similarity report:
- Blue or Green: Acceptable (indicates that no plagiarism has been detected)
- Yellow, orange, and red: Unacceptable (indicates that plagiarism has been detected.)
Note that Turnitin does not detect small matches. Therefore, a Turnitin report with a low percentage does not guarantee that the assignment is free of plagiarism or of practices that lack academic integrity. It is the student’s responsibility to review the document and correct all instances of faulty citations and poor summarizing.
Regardless of the color tagged in the report, the instructor will examine the Turnitin report to determine the level of potential infractions. Please note that matches may occur because specialized areas often use a common language.
FAQs on Turnitin
I am not able to see my Turnitin report?
This can be caused by any of the following:
- The instructor has not set up the Turnitin assignment submission to allow students to view the report.
- Once the student has submitted the assignment, it takes a few minutes for the report to be generated.
- When resubmitting an assignment, the student may have to wait up to 24 hours for the revised similarity report to overwrite the original report in the Turnitin database. However, this will NOT affect the assignment submission.
Can Turnitin check images?
No, Turnitin only checks text. It is the student’s responsibility to check that the sources of photos, graphs, tables, and other images included with the assignment are properly acknowledged.
If I have paraphrased something, do I still need to cite it?
Yes, paraphrases still need a citation. Even though the student has written a statement(s) in their own words, they must still cite the source from whence the idea(s) came. To ensure students always reference sources correctly, an accurate record of all sources must be kept.
Review of Plagiarism
Refer to the SGU Plagiarism Policy, reproduced above in Appendix C, for the consequences of plagiarism identified in the submitted assignments. Penalties can be applied by Course Directors for work submitted with detected plagiarized content.
The penalties for plagiarism are intended to be transparent, consistently applied procedures that protect the integrity of students' and faculty members' work at SGU and the University's reputation.
Students should be aware of the specific penalties that pertain to the program and each individual course that they enroll in. These specific penalties are defined in the course syllabus. Below are some examples of penalties that may be applied. It is the individual course director/instructor/Supervisory Committee Chair’s responsibility to determine the penalties for plagiarism in student submissions in their courses.
- In instances where citations are incorrect or incomplete, but where there has been no apparent attempt to deceive the instructor as to the source(s), the student could be allowed to rewrite the assignment once without penalty and to use this as a learning experience. It is crucial that the instructor point out the evidence of minor plagiarism and educate the student on how to avoid such errors in the future.
- In instances where a repeat submission contains either a minimal amount of plagiarism, (i.e. one or two short passages in a longer assignment) or extensive plagiarism from other unreferenced sources, the student will fail that assignment with a grade of ‘F’. In such instances, the instructor should clearly highlight where the plagiarized work occurs in the submitted work. If the student disagrees with this assessment, they should seek arbitration on this from a trusted third-party faculty member. In the absence of a resolution, the instructor should inform the student that the submission is unacceptable and requires resubmission.
- In instances where a student plagiarizes on resubmitted assignments, even if minimally, the student will not only fail that assignment but also the course. The instructor must also place a letter stating that the failing grade was due to plagiarism, which should be placed on the student’s record and presented at the next APRC meeting.
- In the event of repeated violations of the SGU Plagiarism Policy, as presented at APRC meetings, such students may be recommended for dismissal from the program.
Grievances
If the student disagrees with the instructor’s decision that plagiarism occurred and/or the consequent penalty, the student should follow the standard academic grievance procedure outlined in the Student Manual.