Plagiarism

Research

Presenting someone else's words, ideas, data, or images as your own, whether copied verbatim or paraphrased, without proper attribution to the original source.

Sources

1. US Office of Research Integrity — Definition of research misconduct ori.hhs.gov accessed 17 September 2026

The US Office of Research Integrity defines plagiarism as “The appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit”, and places it alongside fabrication and falsification as the three forms of research misconduct. Two features of that definition carry this entry. Ideas and processes come before words, so rewording a source does not avoid plagiarism. And ORI adds that “Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion” — the offence is appropriation without credit, not getting something wrong.

This entry is sourced to a body with standing over the practice it names, which is tier 1 of this lexicon’s rule for research terms. Where a definition is quoted, it is the body’s own wording; the reading of what it implies is this lexicon’s.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

Rewritten from a truncated AJG archive entry, August 2026.