Beginning Your Research

Once you have collected and evaluated your resource, ensure that you cite your sources!  As a general rule, you need to give credit where credit is due.  If you do not credit an author, this is plagiarism, which is a serious violation of academic integrity.

By citing the sources and creating proper references, you:

• Connect your work to others’ work in your discipline
• Allow readers to consult the original information resources used
• Provide evidence for your own argument, and prevent plagiarism
• Maintain academic integrity and academic honesty

What is plagiarism?

According to the Cambridge Dictionaries Online, to plagiarize is "to use another person's idea or a part of their work and pretend that it is your own". [Plagiarize. (2010). In Cambridge advanced learners dictionary. Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/plagiarize]

Here are the most common forms of plagiarism:

• Paraphrase (i.e., put other people's ideas into your own words) without acknowledging the source
• Copy sentences or passages from the Web, or copy sentences or paragraphs from a book or an article, without citing the source
• Copy part of or the entire term paper written by someone else
• Buy a term paper written by someone else and submit it as your own

CityU librarians have compiled a Research Guide on "Citing Sources of Information". Refer to this guide to learn more about how to cite sources of information in your literature review. Also refer to our "Preventing Plagiarism" Research Guide to learn how to prevent plagiarism.