All Princeton students pledge to adhere to Honor Code
This booklet provides information about Princeton’s academic regulations and how you can safeguard the integrity of your original weeork
Plagiarism, Rights, Rules, Responsibilities
The University as an Intellectual Community
We are here to learn from each other and teach each other. All of us benefit from free exchange of ideas, theories, solutions and interpretations. We test our thoughts & ideas, we profit by analyzing and evaluating the ideas of our classmates, friends, advisers, and teachers.
Trust is the central ethic of such an intellectual community, in several respects.
As we at the University strive to build on their work, all of us (from freshman to full professor) are obligated by the ethic of intellectual honesty to credit that work to its originator.
The Challenge of Original Work
The greatest satisfaction of academic work comes from making something original, something distinctly your own, out of the material you’ve learned in your courses and discovered in your research. Doing original work is the most demanding, but also the most rewarding, part of your Princeton education.
You must always distinguish your own words and ideas from the words and ideas of others
In this booklet, you’ll find definitions, discussions, and examples of terms such as plagiarism, collaboration, and common knowledge as well as useful advice on how to protect the integrity of your academic work.
Acknowledging Your Sources
Several Reasons For Acknowledging your Sources
To distinguish your own work
To receive credit for the research you’ve done on a project.
To establish the credibility and authority of your knowledge and ideas.
To place your own ideas in context, locating your work in the larger intellectual conversation about your topic.
To permit your reader to pursue your topic further by reading more about it.
To permit your reader to check on your use of source material.
In all of these reasons, the essential element is intellectual honesty
Most Important:if you fail to cite your sources, whether deliberately or inadvertently, you will still be found responsible for the act of plagiarism.
In fact, you must type the following sentence and sign your name on each piece of work you submit: “This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations.” For electronic submissions, you may type your name preceded by the notation /s/, which stands for “signature.” This signed pledge symbolizes your adherence to the University’s core values of honesty and integrity in intellectual work.
When to Cite Sources
General Rule: when in doubt, cite
Quotation
Paraphrase is a restatement of another person’s thoughts or ideas in your own words, using your own sentence structure.
Summary is a concise statement of another person’s thoughts or ideas in your own words. Summary is normally shorter than the original. A distillation of the source’s ideas.
Facts, Information, and Data. Note that facts are different from ideas: Facts may not need to be cited, whereas ideas must always be cited.
Supplementary Information.
For international students, it’s especially important to review and understand the citation standards and expectations for institutions of higher learning in the United States.
Nonprint and Electronic Sources
Websites may provide partial, deceptive, or false information in order to promote explicit or hidden agendas.
Not-So-Common Knowledge
“Common Knowledge” := information in The World Book Encyclopedia
The depersonalized nature of electronic information can devalue the sense of intellectual ownership: the information seems to belong to nobody and to everybody
Examples of Plagiarism
Misrepresenting Original Work
Students commit false citation when they cite sources they didn’t directly consult; such a violation is subject to the same penalties as plagiarism. Fabricating or falsifying data of any kind is also a serious academic violation.