1. Academic honesty
In academically honest writing or speaking, students must document sources of information whenever:
- another person's exact words are quoted.
- another person's idea, opinion or theory is used through paraphrase.
- facts, statistics or other illustrative materials are borrowed.
In other to complete academically honest work, students will:
- acknowledge all sources according to the method of citation preferred by the instructor.
- write as much as possible from their own understanding of the materials and in their own voice.
In order to produce academically honest work, students at Green River College are able to:
- ask an authority on the subject of the work - such as the instructor who assigned the work.
- seek help from academic student services such as the library, writing center, math learning center and the tutoring center.
2. Definition of plagiarism:
Plagiarism is defined as using others' original ideas in one's written or spoken work without giving proper credit.
Ideas include but are not limited to:
- Facts
- Opinions
- Images
- Statistics
- Equations
- Hypotheses
- Theories
Plagiarism can occur in two ways: intentional and unintentional.
Ways that intentional plagiarism occurs include but are not limited to:
- turning in someone else's work as one's own.
- copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit.
- failing to put a quotation in quotation marks.
- giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation.
- changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit.
- copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of one's work, whether giving credit or not.
Unintentional plagiarism may occur when students have tried in good faith to document their academic work but fail to do so accurately or thoroughly. Unintentional plagiarism may also occur when a student has not had coursework covering plagiarism and documentation and is therefore unprepared for college academic writing or speaking.
