At its core, intellectual honesty requires students, academics, and researchers to be transparent about the sources of their ideas and to acknowledge the contributions of others in their writing. This basic principle forms a foundation for acquiring and developing knowledge. Because knowledge is typically cumulative, further advances are predicated on the contributions of others. Within systems of scholarship, such contributions are critically evaluated before being used as a foundation for further inquiry. Intellectual honesty is essential to ensure that intellectual contributions are transparent and open to critique. Throughout your coursework you will be expected always to cite your sources and to describe clearly the means by which you obtained the information you share, so that others can follow your research practices and thought processes.

There is a large body of knowledge in the health disciplines that continues to evolve as writers integrate, debate, and build upon the ideas, models, theories, and research outcomes generated by others. However, that foundational knowledge becomes unstable and unreliable if there is no way to trace the origins and evolution of these conceptual threads, because the ideas have not been accurately and consistently attributed to their sources. To claim the contributions and ideas of another author as your own is plagiarism. As a writer, you not only compromise your own academic integrity by failing to attribute accurately ideas to their sources, but also you break the threads that allow those who read your work to critique and evaluate it, and to build a solid foundation of knowledge in the health disciplines.

Intellectual honesty is one of the core values of the professional education, and it is a concept we expect each of you to understand fully as you enter into graduate studies. Students enrolled in programs and courses within the health disciplines are considered to be responsible scholars; they are, therefore, expected to adhere rigorously to the principles of intellectual integrity. These expectations are reflected in the following Faculty of Health Disciplines [FHD] program outcome:

Acting with intellectual integrity begins with recognizing the expected standards of honesty. The remaining subsections describe policies and practices related to intellectual indebtedness and plagiarism. Most universities and colleagues have intellectual honesty policies. You may find it useful to read the Athabasca University [AU] Student Academic Misconduct Policy for a better understanding of the kinds of activities that constitute breaches of academic honesty.

To create a strong paper that evidences scholarly integrity, you will synthesize the work of a number of individuals, express their ideas in your own words, and credit them accurately. When you present your own ideas or opinions, you will provide evidence to substantiate your position by drawing on the professional literature. Graduate students are considered to be responsible scholars and are, therefore, expected to adhere rigorously to the principles of intellectual integrity. Deliberate deceit in reporting information, ideas, and research is clearly unacceptable; however, there can be other, less obvious, forms of intellectual dishonesty for which you can be held accountable. Each of the common pitfalls (below) are considered forms of plagiarism, even if you engage in them unintentionally.

Failure to Cite the Sources of Ideas

One of the most common pitfalls into which students fall, in terms of scholarly integrity, is not providing citations for the sources of their ideas. The bottom line is transparency. You must make it crystal clear to the reader whose idea you are presenting. For each of the key points and subpoints in your paper, you must provide the proper citation for the sources of your information. When you draw information from someone else, please be very careful to (a) present the ideas in your own words, and (b) cite the source accurately. If you make a statement that most people would consider common knowledge, you do not need a citation (e.g., “Canada and the United States share a common border”). However, other types of substantive statements in your paper must be supported with sources taken from the professional literature.

The following examples demonstrate writing using insufficient citations, which is a form of plagiarism.

1. You make the following statements and provide no citation for them: “The therapeutic relationship has emerged as one of the most important factors in effective counselling,” or “There is little evidence that vaccination alone can account for all of the variance in health outcomes.” This information is not something that you would know without drawing on the work of others, so you must provide an appropriate citation.
2. You copy a phrase, sentence, or larger portion from a source, and you fail to include both quotation marks and the proper citation. For example, you might write, “Nurse practitioners should attend to the principles of assessment and triage for specific presenting concerns.” The portion underlined is word-for-word from one of your sources. Including that phrase without using quotation marks and citing the source is considered plagiarism even though you did not copy the whole sentence.
3. You draw an idea from someone and fail to cite the source of that idea, even if you have carefully paraphrased the idea (i.e., you have used your own words, but not your own idea). For example, you summarize the work of Jerry (2019), or you write down in your own words what you learned from both Jerry (2019) and Nuttgens (2018), but you do not cite them. Even though you have used your own words, these are not your ideas; therefore, not citing them constitutes plagiarism.
4. You provide an incorrect source for a direct quotation (i.e., word-for-word excerpt) or a paraphrase. You make the following statement, and you cite Jerry (2019), when it was actually Nuttgens (2018) who made the statement: “There is little evidence that counselling theory alone can account for all of the variance in success rates” (Jerry, 2019). This may happen, because of the use of secondary sources, or because you have not kept careful track of the sources of your information. Regardless of the cause, this too is considered plagiarism.

If you are providing your own opinion or pulling out the themes from various sources you have already described, then be sure to indicate clearly that this is what you are doing: “Based on the analysis provided above, I have identified three themes that reflect current trends in the literature.” In this case, you don’t need to include all of your sources again, but you must ensure that this is your own synthesis and that the sources are documented in the section you are summarizing.

In the audio file below, I position plagiarism in the context of professional ethics, in terms of development of your own voice and respect for the voices of others.

Click on the audio file on the left, or review the MS Word version if you prefer.

Failure to Properly Paraphrase Information

Unless there is something unique or particularly powerful about the wording used by another writer, you should use your own words in your paper, citing the source of the idea. Using your own words means building your arguments within each paragraph by drawing on ideas, concepts, and themes from the work of others, rather than stringing together statements they have made.

The following examples would be considered plagiarism:

1. You repeat a simple statement, such as “The crux of education is collaborative learning,” without putting it in quotation marks or substantially rewording it. Simply restating it as “Learning collaboratively is the crux of graduate education” is not a paraphrase and would be considered plagiarism. A proper paraphrase might be “What is really important is that the learning experience is bi-directional.”
2. You create a list in your paper that pulls key points from a source without putting each point in your own words. For example, you state: “Collins (2020) identifies three potential pitfalls that evidence plagiarism: failure to cite sources of ideas, failure to properly paraphrase information, and copying an entire paper.” Even though this statement is not one continuous quotation from Collins (i.e., it has been drawn from the headings on this page), it is not a paraphrase. You would need to say something like “Collins (2020) warns graduate students to pay careful attention to the need to appropriately credit all sources, the importance of using one’s own words, as well as to the more blatant dishonesty of submitting a paper they did not write.”

To ensure you understand these principles, please listen to the audio file on proper paraphrasing.

Click on the audio file on the left, or review the MS Word version if you prefer.

Copying an Entire Paper (or Portions Thereof)

You are always expected to complete your own work, unless assignments have been set up specifically for group work. This does not mean that you cannot solicit feedback from an instructor to incorporate into your assignment, have a colleague proofread your work before you submit it, or consult with peers on ideas and expectations. It simply means that your work is your work. Consider the following examples of plagiarism:

• You copy someone else’s paper for your entire assignment.
• You copy sections of another student’s paper or a journal article.
• You submit a document (or a portion of a document) when other people have contributed to the creation of that work.

Instructors have many tools available to them to detect this type of intellectual dishonesty, including plagiarism detection software.

2.3 Plagiarizing Your Own Work

2.4 Misusing Secondary Sources

An original source is the author(s) who first makes a statement, introduces a concept, reports on research, or presents a new idea. Sometimes this original source is cited within the text of an article or book you read. This makes that article or book you read a secondary source for the statement, concept, research, or idea. A secondary source provides a second-hand account of information from the primary source. So, for example, Mules (2020) described a study conducted by Nuttgens (2017). Mules is a secondary source of information; Nuttgens is the original source. Using Mules as your source, rather than reading and citing Nuttgens, is like relying on hearsay in court, and it is a breach of academic integrity. You cannot state for sure what Nuttgens said unless you actually read their work. Otherwise, you are taking Mules’ word for what Nuttgens had to say. You may later discover that Mules did not correctly represent Nuttgens’ views. You have then become responsible for passing on that misrepresentation. In addition, you put yourself at risk of plagiarism and other breaches of scholarly integrity that may have occurred in the secondary source you read.

Consider, for example, the following statements by Mules (2020): “There is growing support for taking a more metalevel approach to the teaching of counselling theories (Nuttgens, 2017). However, some graduate courses maintain a traditional approach to teaching theories.” The following examples demonstrate intellectual dishonesty, because you are failing to give proper respect and credit to the information sources you are using in your paper:

1. You cite Mules (2020) for ideas he presents, when Mules was actually citing Nuttgens (2017); this gives Mules credit for the work of Nuttgens. For example, it is inappropriate to write in your paper: “The current trend in counselling theories courses is to organize the course according to broader philosophical principles (Mules, 2009).” You must actually read the work of Nuttgens (2017) and credit Nuttgens, not Mules, for this idea.
2. You cite Mules as a secondary source when the article by Nuttgens is in the university library; this is inappropriate, because you chose not to access the readily available primary source of the information. For example, you write in your paper “According to Nuttgens, the current trend in counselling theories courses is to organize the course according to broader philosophical principles (as cited in Mules, 2020).” In this case, you are giving Nuttgens credit (in APA style), but you are still taking Mules’ word for what Nuttgens had to say even though you could have accessed Nuttgens directly. You must actually read the work of Nuttgens and credit them, not Mules, for this idea.

Unless the article by Nuttgens (2017) is difficult to access (i.e., not available through the library or an Internet search), you are expected to read the original source before you make reference to it in your paper. If it is difficult to access, then your first course of action is to find an alternative source for this information. Only in rare instances, where the material is a classic piece of writing that is no longer accessible, may you draw on the secondary source.

Many textbooks are primarily secondary sources. For example, the person(s) who wrote your text on nursing or counselling theory may not have developed the theories themselves; instead, they drew on other sources to pull together a succinct overview of each model. Much of the content of the text is, therefore, a secondary source, and you must find works by the original theorist, wherever possible, if you want to reference key aspects of a particular theory. Exceptions exist, of course, such as textbooks wherein the author of the text presents their own research, conceptual, or theoretical work. It is also important to watch out for edited books, in which individual chapters are written by different authors. In this case, you must attribute the ideas to the chapter author, not the book editor.

2.5 Discerning When and How to Cite Others

The key to avoiding plagiarism is being very clear about which content requires a citation and understanding how to properly paraphrase information. In the following subsections, I will provide some helpful principles and practices.

Discerning When to Cite Others

It is often a challenge for students to figure out how much citing of other works to do in a paper. Here are some general guidelines:

• Give information that you are sure is either common knowledge in the public domain (e.g., dates of historical events) or common knowledge in your field (e.g., the Likert scale format), without a specific reference for that point. Be careful not to assume that common knowledge in one context applies to all other situations. The key question to ask yourself is: “Will my readers also possess this information?” When in doubt, locate and cite a source for the information.
• Provide a citation to at least one or two sources from the professional literature for each main point you make. In some cases, you can then reflect on that point without citations. However, you must be certain that the reader understands that the sources cited with the first point are also the sources for subsequent sentences. If this is not clear, repeat the citations. As soon as you make another main point, or talk about anything that is not your original idea, you must again draw on the literature to support that point.
• Translate others’ ideas into your own words, and then cite your sources, unless a direct quotation expresses something in a way that is unique or particularly eloquent. In that case, it is appropriate to use it. However, if you string together too many quotations, you risk losing your voice and your ability to demonstrate that you have thought critically about the material. In many cases, it also becomes difficult to follow your train of thought. As a general rule, if you do a word count and your quotations are edging up to 20% of your total words, you are in trouble!
• Avoid relying heavily on one source for large chunks of your paper. In a section of 200 to 400 words, you should draw on at least two or three sources.
• Take ownership of your argument even if you find a great article in which the author made a number of points that you want to incorporate into your paper. Do not simply paraphrase what that person has said and conclude you have written a paper. You may incorporate the author’s points, but you must also integrate other materials, demonstrate that you have thought critically about those points, and organize the paper according to your conceptual framework, not that of the article’s author.
• Discern when to cite others for all forms of professional writing. Although the focus of this resource is on writing graduate papers, it is important to remember that citing your sources may be required for other professional materials you create, such as presentations for conferences or workshops (even PowerPoint slides), worksheets or handouts for clients, or articles for newsletters.

Paraphrasing Effectively

The main way to avoid plagiarizing the work of others is to learn to paraphrase effectively. Be sure that you use this skill from the moment you begin to take notes about what others have written. Consider the following suggestions to support writing in your own words.

• Stop periodically, as you read an article, to write short summaries of the key points that seem most important or relevant without looking back at the words used by the author.
• Use voice dictation software to record your ideas, speaking out loud as if you are explaining the key points to another person.
• Practice reading for meaning rather than reading for vocabulary. Reduce a sentence or paragraph to 3–4 key words. Then put those 3–4 words into a sentence of your own.
• Take a short break after you finish reading an article or a section of an article. Then write out the points or arguments that you would like to make in your paper, before going back to the article to ensure that these ideas are supported directly by that source.
• If you decide that a particular point is really important, but you are struggling to put it in your own words, write down a counter-argument to the point being made. Then respond to that counter-argument using your own words.
• If there is no way to capture the meaning in your own words, use a short quotation from the source, and cite it appropriately.

Unless there is something unique or particularly powerful about the wording used by a source, you should use your own words in your paper, and cite the source of the idea. You are expected to build your own argument in your own words, drawing on ideas, concepts, and themes from the work of others. I provide more details and suggestions about how to synthesize and integrate the literature in Section 5.6.

Recalling the discussion of developing your own voice (Section 1.3), if you are providing your own opinion or pulling out the themes from various sources you have already described, be sure to indicate clearly that this is what you are doing: “Based on the analysis provided above, I have identified three themes that reflect current trends in the literature.” In this case, you do not need to include all of your sources again, but you must be sure that this is your own synthesis and that the sources are documented in the section you are summarizing. The bottom line is transparency: Ask yourself “Will the reader be able, easily, to identify the source of the ideas?”