11 Misrepresentation: Copying and Pasting
Copying and Pasting
It is ok to use other information to support your arguments as long as you quote, paraphrase or summarize properly and cite your sources. However, copying and pasting whole chunks of information is poor scholarship and does not reflect any learning or understanding on your part. This will get you a very poor grade, even if you cite your sources. If you do not cite at all, this is also plagiarism.
This principle now extends to AI-generated content. Simply copying and pasting AI output into your assignments without proper attribution, modification, or understanding constitutes plagiarism, even if the AI created original content.
- The Clone: directly copying and pasting everything (from one or from multiple sources) without citing
- The Mosaic: directly copying and pasting passages (from one or from multiple sources) without citing and adding some original thought
- Copy, Paste, Replace: copying and pasting everything or passages (from one or from multiple sources) without citing, then replacing a few words to make it sound different; maybe adding some original thought too
- Reusing a specific structure that someone else created without acknowledgement. For example, using a template, outline, form, the exact same headings, same number of sentences, and covering exactly the same concepts of a sample report given to you by your instructor (unless explicitly permitted by your instructor).
Sample template you found
Your template
Source: (200degrees, 2016).
AI-Specific Copying and Pasting Issues:
- Prompt and paste: Using AI to generate content and directly inserting it without modification or attribution
- AI laundering: Running existing sources through AI to “rewrite” them, then presenting the output as original work
- Multi-AI copying: Using multiple AI tools to generate content on the same topic and combining their outputs without attribution
