The term “literary plagiarism” in academia refers to presenting another’s work as one’s own.  Use of freely accessible online materials exacerbates the phenomenon.

Plagiarism may be purposeful or accidental.

One might purposely or accidentally include part or all of authored material in their course and academic work (including presentations) without referencing it.  This may occur because he does not know that he needs to acknowledge copied material or how to do it.  Authors should be aware that they cannot copy their own published data and illustrations without citing them (self plagiarism).

Regardless of why the material was plagiarized, it is a clear violation of academic ethics.  In the Technion it is listed as a violation in the Student Discipline Statutes (paragraph 15 and the same as for undergraduate studies).

In academic writing the authors often rely on previous knowledge and data which is represented in the text itself by:

• Quotations – The use of the original texts written or spoken by others.
• paraphrases – The restatement of texts by using other words.
• Summary – A short representation of the original source by using other words and sentences.

One has to keep the meaning of the original statement when not using quotations.

Important Principles:

• One should not cite a source that hasn’t been used. For example, if the author used a book review in his work, he should cite the review itself, not the book he didn’t read.
• Always specify your sources of information. The use of ideas or texts from books, articles, websites, movies, radio or tv shows, softwares, poems, letters, commersials, etc. must be followed by citation.
• The details of the sources always apear (at least) twice within an academic paper: In-text, right next to the appropriate sentence or paragraph and at the end of the text – as part of the list of sources. The list (also known as ‘bibliography’) should include all the references that mentioned in-text and nothing more. The bibliography is designated to help readers in finding the references when needed, to give credit to the authors of the references and to avoid plagiarism.

Examples:(In accordance to APA citation style)

• In-Text Citations:
  One study examines how academic historians search for, access and use primary source materials in their research pursuits (Chassanoff, 2013).
  OR:
  Chassanoff (2013) examines how academic historians search for, access and use primary source materials in their research pursuits.
• Using Quotations:
  When citing the source in its original form and less than 40 words, a quotation mark must be used with an in-text credit plus the exact pages of that sentence.
  For example:
  “Many institutions are digitizing portions of their archival materials and providing online access through search interfaces” (Chassanoff, 2013, p. 459).
  When the cited part includes more than 40 words or more than two lines, it is written in a seperate paragraph followed by a credit and page numbers. No quotation marks needed.
  For example:
  Chassanoff summarizes:
  The impact digital technologies have had on hisotircal methodologies and scholarly workflow needs to be explored in greater depth. The accumulation of born-digital artifacts generated by personal digital capture devices during archival visits presents interesting organizational and intellectual challenges for future historians. (2013, p. 472)

The source in the bibliography (for both examples):
Chassanoff, A. (2013). Historians and the Use of Primary Source Materials in the Digital Age. The American Archivist, 76(2), 458-480

The citation rules specify which details to apply and how to write them while citing a reference. Writing in accordance to the rules helps the reader to be able to understand the type of the references and to locate them easily. For example:

• For Journal article: Author names, year of publication, article title, jpurnal name, volume, issue and page.
  Hanjalic, A., & Li-Qun Xu. (2005). Affective video content representation and modeling. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 7(1), 143-154.

• For books: Author names, year of publication, book name, publisher name and place of publication.
  Brown, M. C. (2001). Python: The complete reference. New York: Osborne/McGraw-Hill

The in-text citations and the bibliography should be written in accordance to specific rules which called ‘citation styles’. Each style guides the author how to cite, what to include in a citation and in what order. There a numerous citation styles which most of them one can find easily online (e.g. Chicago Style).

Some academic journals have developed their own unique citation styles. In most cases the details and explanations about theses styles (which autors are obligated to in order to publish) are found under “Guides for Authors” in the journal websites. for example: IEEE Citation Reference.

It is very important to be consistent and to use only one citation style in at a time. Occasionally new versions of some citation styles are published. It is important to make sure that you are using the most updated version while writing an academic paper.

Zotero Style Repository – Thousand of citation styles freely to download and use in all CSL 1.0.1 compatible softwares.
Mendeley Citation Style Finder by Example – Type your prefered bibliography and in-text citations and the system will match the most closest citation style for you.
Mendeley’s CSL Editor – To edit and create citation styles. For Mendeley users only.

Citation Management Tools allow you to store, organize and share your research citations (books, articles websites and more) and automatically format your bibliographies in academic writing in a wide variety of styles.

Zotero  is recommended by Technion Libriaries.

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For questions please contact your faculty library or the Reference & Instruction department at the Central Library.