## 5.1 : Why do I need to reference my information sources?

Citations should allow readers or viewers to assess the information’s reliability. This provides others the opportunity to expand on the information through further research or to correct it and to give the original’s creator the 'honour' and respect they deserve. The writing and ideas of others may not appear in your document without a source citation. If you fail to give proper credit, you will commit plagiarism.

Image used under license from Shutterstock.com

If you use another's work, you are required to cite the copyright. For the most part, students commit plagiarism unwittingly. As such, it is much more effective to be safe (plagiarism prevention) than sorry (plagiarism detection).

Definition of plagiarism

Plagiarism entails acquiring others’ work of identical or slightly modified form without providing proper citation.

Explanation:

"...acquiring others’ work..."

- Work= text, or a fragment thereof, images, statistical material, graphics, sound or image recordings, diagrams, etc.
- print work: books, magazine articles, journal articles, etc.
- electronic work: online encyclopaedias, e-books, etc.

"...identical or slightly modified form..."

- Quotation= literal replication of a text fragment between double quotation marks (" ")
- Paraphrasing = acquisition of a person's ideas or propositions in slightly modified form, i.e. restated in your own words
- Summarization = briefly display the key points of larger pieces of text (eg. a page, a chapter or an article) in your own words
- Translation= use of foreign-language texts, for example, text translated from English into Dutch

"...without providing proper citation..."

- Quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing or translating text without citing the source is plagiarism!

Plagiarism can be recognised by:

- a break in the style of the text, (smooth vs rough or scientific vs popular language usage)
- unexpected language (overly academic)
- differences in text formatting
- different reference styles
- mistakes made in, or the omission of, references
- deviations from the subject;
- missing recent references

Plagiarism can also be detected digitally by typing in part of one or multiple suspect sentences in a search engine or by using software specifically designed to detect text duplications, known as plagiarism detection software.