What Is Plagiarism?

Imagine that you have come up with an exciting, new theory and publish it in a journal article. Then someone else writes an article including your theory, but doesn’t give you credit for your idea. How would you feel? You’d probably feel it was unfair for someone else to take credit for your work.

In academics, it is considered worse than unfair when credit isn’t given to the creator of a work or an idea; it is considered unethical. The term for representing someone else’s work as your own, even if unintentionally, is plagiarism. At UNT and all universities, plagiarism is a serious violation of the academic code; see the Student Academic Integrity section of the UNT Policy Manual.

So, whenever you paraphrase or directly quote from someone else’s work, you must provide a citation. It’s the fair and ethical thing to do! Visit Plagiarism.org to find FAQs, examples of plagiarism, and more.

Citation Style Guides

The UNT Libraries provide print manuals and online style guides to assist you in correctly formatting papers and citing references. The links below take you to manuals and guides for the major citation styles. To see all styles available, visit the Citations and Style Guides webpage.

What is RefWorks?

RefWorks is a web-based bibliographic manager that allows you to create your own personal database of citations for both academic and personal use. With RefWorks you can:

• Easily import references from electronic databases, the UNT library catalog, text files, websites and more into your account
• Quickly create reference lists for papers and projects in the citation style of your choice
• Share references with colleagues

See the boxes below to start using your RefWorks account, provided to all students, faculty and staff by the UNT Libraries. Visit the RefWorks Library Guide for video tutorials, and instructions for basic and advanced functions.