This brief chapter will help you understand what is required when you write a research paper. After you formulate your research question, examine various sources of information, and write your paper, the final product should be uniquely yours. If you decide to use the exact words of an author you have to give that person credit. If you do not give the author appropriate credit you are quilty of plagiarism. Webster's dictionary defines plagiarism as stealing and passing off the ideas and words of another as one's own. "Ideas or words" can include written or spoken material, statistics, lab results, art work, etc. If you have quoted a published writer or critic in a book, magazine, encyclopedia, or journal; another student at this college or elsewhere; a paper writing "service" which offers to sell written papers for a fee, or various Internet sites, you must give appropriate credit in your paper (CCC : A Guide to Research Papers, pages 4-5).
The penalty for plagiarism is determined by the professor teaching the course; more often than not, however, it will involve failure for the paper and it could mean failure for the entire course. Repeated infractions of this essential principle of academic responsibility could result in expulsion from the college. Penalties published in Capital's Student Handbook are subject to guidelines determined by the Board of Trustees of Connecticut Community Colleges (CCC : a Guide to Research Papers, pages 4-5).
Capital's Guide to Research Papers gives you information concerning gathering materials and documenting your work in the proper format. The guide gives you examples of citing books, encyclopedias articles, journals, newspapers, interviews, audio-visual materials and radio or television broadcasts. Both printed and electronic sources are covered. A print version of the guide is available in the library.
There are also online automated bibliography composers. Click HERE to view. Look at the section on "Interactive Forms" as well as www.NoodleTools.com.
You can use the frame at right to go to any chapter you wish to explore next. The next chapter in order, however, is Application of Workbook Skills.