General examples of plagiarism
Example
Original text
Globalization means that events in one part of the world have ripple effects elsewhere, as ideas and knowledge, goods and services, and capital and people move more easily across borders. Epidemics never respected borders, but with greater global travel diseases spread more quickly. Greenhouse gases produced in the advanced industrial countries lead to global warming everywhere in the world. Terrorism, too, has become global. As the countries of the world become more closely integrated, they become more interdependent. Greater interdependence gives rise to a greater need for collective action to solve common problems.
The source of this text is: Joseph E. Stiglitz (2006), Making Globalization Work. London: Penguin Books, p. 280.
If you wish to use the idea that this text expresses in your own text, then the first question that you must ask yourself is:
"Do I want to use my own words?"
If the answer is no, then you use a section of the original text literally.
In this case, you must indicate that you have used a citation and not your own words. Thus, you put the text between quotation marks and add a reference. Your text, for example, may be:
How can we define globalization? "Globalization means that events in one part of the world have ripple effects elsewhere, as ideas and knowledge, goods and services, and capital and people move more easily across borders. Epidemics never respected borders, but with greater global travel diseases spread more quickly. Greenhouse gases produced in the advanced industrial countries lead to global warming everywhere in the world. Terrorism, too, has become global." (Stiglitz 2006, p. 280)
Be careful: In the use of the original text, you can make two mistakes. If you do not provide a reference, then you have certainly committed plagiarism. But also if you add the reference without putting the text between quotation marks, you have not referred correctly. In this case, you have used the words of someone else without giving the author recognition for these.
If you want to use your own words (your answer is thus yes), then you use an idea from the original text, but you paraphrase the text. You then place a reference to the original text in the text that you have written. You text, for example, may look like this:
We can take globalization to mean that an event somewhere in the world has an effect elsewhere, and this because ideas, knowledge, goods, services, capital and people do not longer move within national borders but across them. Clear examples are epidemics, the spread of greenhouse gases, or terrorism (Stiglitz 2006, p. 280).
Please note: if you do not add the reference "(Stiglitz 2006, p. 280)" to your own text, then you commit plagiarism! You have not proceeded correctly simply by using your own words. If you use an idea from a text, then you must refer to this text in some manner.
In other words, the following texts are examples of what not to do:
Globalization means that events in one part of the world have ripple effects elsewhere, as ideas and knowledge, goods and services, and capital and people move more easily across borders. As the countries of the world become more closely integrated, they become more interdependent.
Globalization means that events in one part of the world have ripple effects elsewhere, as ideas and knowledge, goods and services, and capital and people move more easily across borders. As the countries of the world become more closely integrated, they become more interdependent. (Stiglitz 2006, p. 280).
You might say that epidemics never respected borders. But nowadays, with greater global travel, these diseases spread more quickly. Greenhouse gases produced in a certain country lead to global warming everywhere in the world. Terrorism, too, has become global. Therefore, we can say globalization means that events in one part of the world have ripple effects elsewhere, as a result of ideas and knowledge, goods and services, and capital and people moving more easily across borders.
Self tests
You can test your recognition of plagiarism with these self tests, which are on the internet.
