LSU Libraries - The Research Process

CONTENTS:
Introduction
Clearly define your topic
Collect/find information
Evaluate the information you find
Use and/or do something with the information
Use the information ethically and legally

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5. Behave ethically and legally with that information

First, there are a couple of terms you should be familiar with:

Copyright - is the legal protection of the creators rights to reproduction or use of their materials. Copyright covers, published or unpublished, anything literary, musical, dramatic, pictorial, audio-visual, and anything published on the Internet.
Plagiarism - is the taking of the ideas or work of another person without formal acknowledgment (citing your source). Or passing someone else's work off as your own. This is a serious ethical issue as well as a legal one. LSU has very strict rules regarding the copying of another person's work, be they another student, a book in the library, or a term paper service off the Internet.

The LSU Code of Student Conduct defines plagiarism as "the unacknowledged inclusion, in work submitted for credit, of someone else's words, ideas, or data."

The LSU Code of Student Conduct also states "Failure to identify any source, published or unpublished, copyrighted or un-copyrighted from which information, terms, phrases, or concepts have been taken, constitutes plagiarism."

For more information on Plagiarism, see the Plagiarism Guide.

It is easy to avoid plagiarism as long as you remember to document, or cite, your sources. Always give people credit for their work by writing a bibliography or works cited list and including footnotes or end notes.

Review Question:

Internet resources do not need to be cited in a bibliography or works cited list.

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