We, the undergraduate students of Roger Williams University, commit ourselves to academic integrity. We promise to pursue the highest ideals of academic life, to challenge ourselves with the most rigorous standards, to be honest in any academic endeavor, to conduct ourselves responsibly and honorably, and to assist one another as we live and work together in mutual support. University Statement on Plagiarism Plagiarism is best defined as incorporating the words or ideas of another person into a paper or presentation without properly crediting the source from which they came.
Plagiarism is a violation of ethical practices.
The author who commits plagiarism attempts to claim another person s work as his or her own. Thus, plagiarism is both a form of intellectual theft and intellectual fraud. In its worst form, plagiarism may consist of directly copying large or small portions of either printed works or, as frequently happens in schools, written papers of another student. There are, however, more subtle forms of plagiarism as well. Paraphrasing, or changing an author s ideas or words, is also a form of plagiarism if the source of the idea being paraphrased is not acknowledged, and this form of plagiarism is equal to direct copying.