Per Skyline College's Course Catalog, "Plagiarism is representing the work of someone else as his/her own and submitting it to fulfill academic requirements." Plagiarism is cheating and is viewed as "academic dishonesty" and therefore, "academic misconduct." For more information, see Academic Integrity/Honesty.
You have plagiarized when you...
To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit by citing sources whenever you use
another person’s idea, opinion, or theory
any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge
quotations of another person’s actual spoken or written words
paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words
You don’t need to cite sources when the information you write about are common facts, your own original research, and/or your own opinions and evaluations.
Some tips to avoid unintentional plagiarism
Citing is more than just creating a Reference or Works Cited List!
Whenever you use another person's language, ideas, or other original content, you need to acknowledge this both within the body of your paper using in-text citations and at the end of your paper in the works cited or reference page.
Your professor will let you know what citation style guide (e.g., AIP, APA, CSE, MLA) is required for the assignment. This style guides are usually specific to your discipline or area of study.
AIP (American Institute of Physics) - commonly used in Physics
APA (American Psychological Association) - commonly used in the Social Sciences.
CSE (Council of Science Editors) - commonly used in the Sciences.
MLA (Modern Language Association) - commonly used for Humanities and Liberal Arts.
Library & Style Guides for APA and MLA
APA library guide and Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide
MLA library guide or Purdue OWL: MLA Formatting and Style Guide.
Example sites for AIP and CSE:
CITATION: A reference source which includes necessary elements of the source cited such as author name, title, and date.
CITATION STYLE: A format for citing sources. The most commonly used styles are MLA, APA, and Chicago.
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): A permanent link (an alphanumeric or numeric string) assigned to a published full text for its discovery online.
PLAGIARISM [pleɪ'dʒəˌrɪzəm]: "Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit."
STYLE GUIDE or MANUAL: A guide for formatting a paper and cited sources.