Scholarly Paper

Research writing involves gathering and using information from a variety of resources and incorporating it into your own writing. This adds credibility and authority to your work provided you credit the author(s) and are selective in choosing your sources.

Many students fail to realize that they risk being charged with plagiarism even if they were not intentionally dishonest but only ignorant or careless. This happens whenever you use someone else's work without giving them credit. You can avoid being accused of plagiarism if you follow some essential rules for citing your sources.

Here are some basic guidelines:

• Three ways to use others’ work: summarize, paraphrase or quote.
• Always cite a source for an idea that is not your own, i.e., the idea belongs to a specific person and is relatively new.
• Cite anything you use even if the material is freely available on the Web since it was created by someone else.
• Summarize when you only need the general point.
• Do not paraphrase too closely. If your words and phrasing match those of your source, you can be accused of plagiarism.
• Do not quote long passages.
• Identify every quotation even if it is only a single line of words.
• Use quotation marks or block quotations to show that you have copied text. (See specific rules in the Graduate Division's Academic Policies and Guidelines.)
• Acknowledge any special or extensive editing from instructors or others reviewing your dissertation.

A quick guide from the University of Wisconsin Writing Center

iThenticate plagiarism-detection software, from Turnitin, is available to Albert Einstein College of Medicine students, postdocs, faculty, and staff who are registered library users. Priority is given to:

• Students in the Graduate Programs in the Biomedical Sciences 
• Postdoctoral Fellows in the Belfer Institute for Advanced Biomedical Studies

Our iThenticate license is a collaboration between the D. Samuel Gottesman Library and the Graduate Programs in the Biomedical Sciences.

To learn more about resources available to help you with your writing projects, please visit the Library's Author's Toolkit research guide.