## Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of copying someone else's words, ideas or research and passing them off as your own work. It is a serious offence in the academic world and can mean the end of your career: it is, in fact, fraud.

If you commit plagiarism during your studies, for example by not including sufficient references, this will often result in sanctions from your programme. You may be excluded from participating in the course or even be removed from your programme.

What is considered plagiarism?
Obvious examples of plagiarism are:

- Submitting a text that is not your own as if it were your own work.
- Copying short or long pieces of text from a source without citing the source.

However, the following are also considered plagiarism:

- “Borrowing” someone else's words or ideas without citing the source.
- Making a few changes to a text (or graph or figure) and pretending you came up with it yourself.
- “Forgetting” to use quotation marks for a direct quote.
- Providing a source reference, but giving an incomplete or incorrect reference so that the source cannot be traced.
- Mentioning a source and the reference in your report, but not in all places where information from the source is used (in which case part of the copied information is presented as your own work).
- Copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your report is considered plagiarism – even if you do refer to the source!

## Unintentional plagiarism with AI

If you use AI-generated output without indicating its origin, you may be accused of plagiarism. After all, GenAI output is based on existing texts or ideas. You may therefore unintentionally commit plagiarism if you pretend that the texts or ideas are your own. It is therefore important to indicate when you have used AI and how you have done so.

More information about how VU Amsterdam deals with plagiarism and fraud can be found here.