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APA Note on Plagiarism
Plagiarism (Principle 6.22), Excerpted from the Concise Rules of APA Style, © 2005 American Psychological Association.
Psychologists do not claim the words and ideas of another as their own; they give credit where credit is due. Quotation marks should be used to indicate the exact words of another. Each time you paraphrase another author (i.e., summarize a passage or rearrange the order or a sentence and change some of the words ), you will need to credit the source in the text. The following paragraph is an example of how one might appropriately paraphrase some of the foregoing material in this section:
As stated in the fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, the ethical principles of scientific publication are designed to ensure the integrity of scientific knowledge and to protect the intellectual property rights of others. As the Publication Manual explains, authors are expected to correct the record if they discover error in their publications; they are also expected to give credit to others for their prior work when it is quoted or paraphrased.
The key element of this principle is that an author does not present the work of another as if it were his or her own work. This can extend to ideas as well as written words. If an author models a study after one done by someone else, the originating author should be given credit. If the rationale for a study was suggested in the Discussion section of someone else’s article, that person should be given credit. Given the free exchange of ideas, which is very important to the health of psychology, an author may not know where an idea for a study originated. If the author does know, however, the author should acknowledge the source; this includes personal communications. (Instructions on referencing publications and personal communications are described next.)