What follows is a glossary of terms that will help explain what plagiarism is and how it can be avoided:

AI Chatbot: A language processing tool that generates text based on user input. For example, a user could input a question, and the AI tool generates a response that could be used unethically such as submitting it as an assignment or paper.

Attribution: ascribing the work or ideas to an author or artist.

Citation: quoting or giving intellectual credit to another’s work or ideas.

Collaboration: working together with someone in a joint intellectual effort.

Copyright: granting an author, composer, playwright or publisher the legal right to exclusively publish, sell or distribute a literary or artistic work.  A copyright is the legal protection of work and provides for the originator to be paid for and control the use of his/her creations.

Common Knowledge: facts known by many people that do not have to be cited.  For example, it is well known that an untreated metal oxidizes when exposed to moisture but explaining that it is caused by atoms losing electrons and gaining a positive charge is not common knowledge, and so this would have to be cited.

Cyber-Plagiarism: copying or downloading in part, or in their entirety, articles or research papers from the internet, or copying ideas found on the Web without giving proper attribution.

Deliberate Plagiarism: the wholesale copying of someone else’s paper with the intent of representing it as one’s own.

Intellectual Property: a creative endeavor that can be protected by copyright, trademark or patent.

Paraphrasing: often used to clarify the meaning it is a restatement of a text or passage in another form using different wording, but it still must be cited.

Paper Mill: an agency that for a fee provides pre-written term papers and other so-called educational tools through the internet.

Plagiarism: stealing or passing off the ideas or words of another as one’s own without giving proper credit; committing literary theft; presenting as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.

Public Domain: refers to ideas and works that belong to everyone and are free to use without having to cite for attribution. The only material not in the public domain is that which has been copyrighted, and, therefore, protected.

Unintentional Plagiarism: carelessly paraphrasing or citing source material where improper or misleading credit is rendered.