All students at Binghamton University are obligated to abide by the Binghamton University Student Academic Honesty Code, which is outlined in the University Bulletin under Academic Politices and Procedures - All Students.
The Binghamton University Student Academic Honesty Code defines academic dishonesty as "the principle that [..]. involves misappropriation of academic or intellectual credit to oneself or to the discredit of others." Some specific examples, though not inclusive, include: cheating, multiple submissions of one assignment, unauthorized collaboration, fabrication and misrepresentation, sabotage, forgery and bribery.
Plagiarism is another violation of the Student Academic Honesty code.
The Binghamton University Student Academic Honesty Code defines plagiarism as: "Presenting the work of another person as one’s own work (including papers, words, ideas, information, computer code, data, evidence organizing principles, or style of presentation of someone else taken from the internet, books, periodicals, or other sources)."
Plan ahead to allow for time to gather your research and take notes of your sources and how you located them.
When you take notes for papers, be sure to keep track of the sources, and write the information in your own words (paraphrasing). Paraphrasing means that you convey the idea in your own words, as opposed to changing just a few words in the sentence.
Avoid cut and pasting large parts of text as a form of note taking.
While writing:
When you cite something, you give credit to the appropriate source for quotes, information and ideas that are not your own. Credit should be given to sources that you quote from, as well as sources consulted for ideas used in your research.
It is difficult to create a list of examples that will cover every potential situation you could come across in your research. However, you will lower your likelihood of committing plagiarism if you follow these guidelines:
Cite all quotes, whether direct or indirect, as well as all sources of paraphrasing.
Provide citations for any idea presented that is not your own.
Cite all statistics, unless they are from your own data analysis.
Cite all pictures and illustrations not created by you.
Information that can be considered "common knowledge" does not need to be cited. Common knowledge refers to information and facts that are widespread, such as the dates of historical events or the chemical formula of water. Common knowledge can also be information that you knew about your subject without doing research. However, common knowledge can change depending on your research and your academic level - something that is well known to a biologist may be new information to you.
A good rule is that if you are not sure if something needs to be cited, talk to your professor or cite it.
Citation is commonly done use a style manual, which provides guidance on how to format the information for a citation (such as title, author, pages, and date) as well as formatting and grammar specifics. Your professor may require the use of a certain manual, or may tell you that you can use a style with which you are comfortable.
Go to the Citation Help page for help in citing sources in common citation styles, plus information on how to find style guides both online and in print.
Refworks allows you to import the citations of the materials you have used into your own database and creates a bibliography for you. It can be useful because it lessens the chance to forgetting to record information about your source material. However, it RefWorks can not tell if you need to cite something.
It is also important to check the bibliography that RefWorks generates, since it will not also be perfect, and will contain some errors in formatting.
