Benjamin L. Stewart

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UAA language departmental plagiarism policy 2024 (under revision)

Under revision - ELT Plagiarism Policy 2026_040520261345.docx - Shared with pCloud

💡 The following plagiarism policy originates from the language department of the UAA. See also Plagiarism: The copycat crime in academia and beyond (APA) and The Nuñez Arancibia Case and others related to plagiarism.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is one of the major problems that people commit when writing an essay, and it is something that can be avoided by citing sources appropriately. “Many people think of plagiarism as copying another’s work or borrowing someone else’s original ideas… [but] plagiarism is an act of fraud; it involves both stealing someone’s else’s work and lying about it afterward” (Plagiarism.org, 2017, paras, 1-3). According to the U.S. law, “the expression of original ideas is considered intellectual property and it protected by copyright laws, just like original inventions. Almost all forms of expression fall under copyright protection as long as they are recorded in some way (such as a book or a computer file” (as cited in Plagiarism.org, 2017, para. 4).

In Mexico, the Ley Federal del Derecho de Autor (2013) states the following:

  • “TITULO XII. De los procedimientos Administrativos.

    • CapĂ­tulo I. De las Infracciones en materia de derecho de autor:

      • ArtĂ­culo 229.- Son infracciones en materia de derecho de autor:

        • IX. Publicar una obra, estando autorizado para ello, sin mencionar en los ejemplares de ella el nombre del autor, traductor, compilador, adaptador o arreglista;

      • ArtĂ­culo 230.- Las infracciones en materia de derechos de autor serán sancionadas por el Instituto con arreglo a los dispuesto por la Ley Federal de Procedimiento Administrativo con multa:

        • II. De mil hasta cinco mil dĂ­as de salario mĂ­nimo en los demás casos previstos en el artĂ­culo anterior.”

The Ley Orgánica de la Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes (2012) states the following:

  • “ArtĂ­culo 178. Los alumnus incurrirán en responsabilidad por:

    • II. Prestar o recibir ayuda fradulenta en los exámenes;

      • CapĂ­tulo II. De las sanciones

  • ArtĂ­culo 186. Las sanciones que pueden imponerse son:

    • III. A los alumnos:

      • AmonestaciĂłn escrita;

      • NulificaciĂłn de los exámenes realizados fraudulentamente, y en este caso se perderá la oportunidad correspondiente;”

Plagiarism also includes, “the act of representing the work of another as one’s own without giving appropriate credit, regardless of how that work was obtained, and submitting it to fulfill academic requirements” (SJSU…, 2024, para. 3). Two key points worth noting in this definition:

  1. Any academic work you turn in should be your own (i.e., original); that is, any AI generated text (or audio, video, images, etc.) should not be considered your own work.

  2. Any program or software used to generate text, audio, video, etc. submitted as academic work is considered plagiarism unless properly cited according to APA (See below.) (paras. 3-4).

Types of Plagiarism

The following are considered types of plagiarism (Turnitin, 2016):

  1. CLONE: Submitting another’s work, Word-for Word, as one’s own.

  2. CTRL-C: Contains significant portions of text from a single source without alterations.

  3. FIND-REPLACE: Changing key words and phrases but retaining the essential content of the source.

  4. REMIX: Paraphrases from multiple sources, made to fit together.

  5. RECYCLE: Borrows generously from the writer’s previous work without citation.

  6. HYBRID: Combines perfectly cited sources with copied passages without citation

  7. MASHUP: Mixes copied material from multiple sources

  8. 404 ERROR: Includes citations to non-existent or inaccurate information about sources

  9. AGGREGATOR: Includes proper citation to sources but the paper contains almost no original work

  10. RE-TWEET: Includes proper citation, but relies too closely on the text’s original wording and/or structure.

Common forms of plagiarism

There are four common forms of plagiarism one should avoid (University of North Texas, 2022):

  1. “Direct Plagiarism is the word-for-word transcription of a section of someone else’s work, without attribution and without quotation marks.” This is also referred to as clone plagiarism by Turnitin.

  2. Self Plagiarism occurs when a student submits their previous work, or mixes parts of previous works, without permission from all professors involved. For example, it would be unacceptable to incorporate part of a term paper you wrote in high school into a paper assigned in a college course. Self-plagiarism also applies to submitting the same piece of work for assignments in different classes without previous permission from both professors.” This is also referred to as recycle plagiarism by Turnitin.

  3. Mosaic Plagiarism occurs when a student borrows phrases from a source without using quotation marks, or finds synonyms for the author’s language while keeping to the same general structure and meaning of the original.” This type of plagiarism is frequently called patchwriting and it most frequently occurs when students fail to paraphrase correctly. This is a combination of CTRL-C and Find-Replace plagiarism by Turnitin.

  4. Accidental Plagiarism occurs when a person neglects to cite their sources, or misquotes their sources, or unintentionally paraphrases a source by using similar words, groups of words, and/or sentence structure without attribution.” This a combination of Hybrid, Mashup, Aggregator, and Re-Tweet plagiarism by Turnitin” (para 2).

Plagiarism and AI

Using any form of artificial intelligence (AI) (e.g., ChatGPT, etc.) to generate a text requires a proper citation and reference according to the latest edition of APA. For example, a parenthetical citation and corresponding reference for a text generated by ChatGPT would be as follows: (OpenAI, 2022); the corresponding reference for this citation would be as follows: OpenAI. (2022). ChatGPT [Software]. Retrieved from https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

A failure to include proper citations and references for any AI-generated text constitutes plagiarism and will result in sanctions.

Sanctions

If any cases of plagiarism are found in any class assignments, the result will be a grade of zero for the work, and in some cases, for the entire subject. Refer to the syllabus for details.

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