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The Research Process

New to college research? This guide gives you an overview of how to get started.

What Is Plagiarism?

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is defined as presenting someone else's words or ideas as your own.

The PCC Student Handbook includes a section under "Prohibited Student Conduct" that discusses academic dishonesty, which includes plagiarism:

"Academic Dishonesty – cheating, plagiarizing, or aiding and abetting another person in cheating or plagiarism (Cheating means getting help that was not approved by your instructor from someone or something on a test, quiz, exam, or assignment. Plagiarism means to submit as one’s own the work of another. Plagiarism is stealing someone else’s ideas or words)."   PCC Student Handbook [PDF]

 

Video Tutorial

How to Avoid Plagiarism

copy iconTo avoid plagiarism . . .

  • Use quotes and paraphrasing to SUPPORT your own ideas, not replace them. 
  • Give credit (or cite) any quotes or ideas that you get from another source.
  • Do not re-use a paper that you wrote for another class. This is called self-plagiarism.
  • Do not copy and paste information from the web (or library database, article, e-book, etc.) directly into your paper without paraphrasing, quoting, or citing the information properly.

Video Tutorials

If you need more help in understanding how to balance your ideas with support from outside sources, how to use in-text citations, how to use quotes, etc., watch the series of Research Companion videos below.

More tutorials . . .

You can view more research tutorials from Research Companion by accessing the database link below.

Help

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