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Plagiarism and Turnitin

Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism is taking credit for work that is not yours. Failing to appropriately cite or paraphrase outside sources is plagiarism, even if unintentional. The good news is that you can easily avoid this problem by giving proper attribution to your sources.

Plagiarism is an academic integrity violation. Academic integrity also encompasses cheating, fabrication, obtaining an unfair advantage, unauthorized access to computerized records or systems, identity fraud, and facilitating others' violations of academic integrity. All Aurora University students are held to academic integrity standards. Consequences for violating the Academic Integrity Code can be serious, including dismissal from the university.

Learn more about what to cite and how to do it properly. This workshop from the Academic Support Center covers everything you need to know to avoid plagiarism.

More Resources

Benefits of Proper Attribution

Giving appropriate credit to your sources has several benefits.

  • It adds to your own credibility as an author by showing you have done appropriate research on your topic and approached your work ethically.
  • It gives credit to the original author and their work, and in giving them credit, it helps you avoid unintentionally plagiarizing.
  • It gives your readers additional resources that they can go to if they want to read further on your topic.

This text is adapted from The Word on College Reading and Writing by Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Be Cautious of ChatGPT and Other AI

Taking credit for work from ChatGPT is dishonest. Depending on how ChatGPT or other generative AI is used, a student could violate academic integrity expectations. The Academic Integrity Policy states, "Aurora University expects students to do their own academic work."

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is an organization that was founded in the early 2000s to assist users in legally sharing knowledge and creative works through Creative Commons Licenses. CC licenses allow reuse but do require attribution. Citing a CC-licensed source is also essential to avoid academic dishonesty.