The definition of plagiarism
K.U.Leuven defines plagiarism as follows:
Plagiarism is any identical or lightly-altered use of one's own or someone else’s work (ideas, texts, structures, images, plans, etc.) without adequate reference to the source.
Plagiarism appears in different forms:
- The literal or near-literal use of someone else’s text(s) (or parts of these) irrespective of the source (including digital sources, whether or not through the internet) without indicating a citation (for example, through quotation marks) and / or without adequate reference to the source
- Copying images, diagrams, graphics, figures, sound or image fragments, etc., without adequate reference to the source
- Paraphrasing someone else’s arguments without adequate reference to the source
- Translating texts without adequate reference to the source
Plagiarism damages the quality of a paper and thus can be interpreted as fraud. Other forms of fraud lean towards plagiarism and are just as intolerable, such as:
- Commissioning or having papers revised (whether or not for pay), and passing this off as one’s own work
- The re-use of one’s own work and passing it off as a new paper
- Simulating or falsifying research data
