Hypothetically speaking. Let say I’m a astrophysicist. I’m well read in the field, made my own observations and conclusions.
Lets also say I’m writing a book about the solar system. I’ve studied all the planets, but Mars. I know nothing about mars. But the book needs Mars.
I know I can go Nasa’s and Steven Hawking’s websites and get all the information I need on the subject.
But there’s no way for me to directly confirm any of the material myself. I’m basically just regurgitating what I read on Nasa’s and Steven Hawking website.
How do I go about giving them credit while also not plagiarizing? Does the fact of me giving them credit omit me from plagiarizing? Can I use their information without their direct consent(lets says Mr. Hawking is still alive and can be contacted.)?
In: Other
>Does the fact of me giving them credit omit me from plagiarizing?
Yes.
The difference is citation. In academic writing you always cite any source of information you use to draw information. So in this case you would make it very clear to the reader that the information about Mars is coming from a different source and those sources are given proper credit.
The citation makes it decidedly not plagiarism. And in general, quoting or summarizing someone’s published work in your paper/book won’t need explicit permission. However you might run into some copyright issues if you do something like quote their entire paper into your own.
I am going to have to disagree with the other answers.
Lets take an extreme example, lets say I’m writing my PhD thesis and I’m doing it on the expansion of the universe. Well Stephen Hawking was a smart person, and thats what his PhD was in, how about I just copy the entire thing and then reference him at the end. Thats fine right because I’ve referenced him? No. Of course not. This is plagiarism.
There is some subtlety to it. The most important thing is that you do reference, the next most important thing is that it should either be in your own words or a direct quotation and marked as a quotation (using quotation marks). If you directly quote someone without marking it as a quote, then that is plagiarism even if you reference them.
When doing this, it should only be enough to convey whatever point you are needing to set up for whatever is coming next. You should not just be spewing stuff from your references for the sake of it.
I don’t think there’s as much of a difference between the sections you describe as you think there is.
> Lets also say I’m writing a book about the solar system. I’ve studied all the planets …
Unless you’ve personally gathered all the facts you present in your book, you’re going to need references for all of them, and you’re going to have to cite them.
> I know I can go Nasa’s and Steven Hawking’s websites and get all the information I need on the subject.
But there’s no way for me to directly confirm any of the material myself.
And that’s true for all the other planets as well. (Again assuming you haven’t done original research on the other seven and just skipped Mars somehow.) The *only* difference here is how long ago you read someone else’s work to form your understanding.
> I’m basically just regurgitating what I read on Nasa’s and Steven Hawking website.
I hope not, because otherwise this book is useless, references or no. Presumably you’re interpreting their work, combining them together, and synthesizing new ideas from their conclusions. Your use of their work, either paraphrased or quoted, is just to establish a baseline with your reader that you can proceed from together.
Your new ideas may just be to provide an understandable overview of the subject of Mars, but that’s still adding *something* to the scientific conversation.
Plagiarizing is presenting the work and ideas of other people as if they were your own. You can reference other people’s work and make it clear that the information used is not your own, but derived from the work of other people. However the expectation is then that you then actually work a bit with that information and present new findings or discussion on said work, as there is still copyright on the previous material that doesn’t go away. Your Mars chapter *can* rely on information you’ve sourced from other people, but it can’t just be a copy paste section from a different book without permission.
Latest Answers