Helping students understand where they should provide citations in research manuscripts is an essential aspect of training them in the responsible and ethical conduct of research. This Lesson comprises about 35 minutes of in-class work to help students learn how to avoid plagiarism. The Lesson is ideally integrated into a course in which a research report will be written. It introduces students to professional norms and explores the ethical “gray areas” surrounding the topic of citation. First, small student groups discuss case studies to reach a consensus on the question, “Is this plagiarism?” After a report-out to identify emergent themes, students then evaluate a paragraph from a published primary research manuscript and discuss why some sentences have citations and others do not. The choice of manuscript excerpt is flexible, based on teacher preferences and course subject area. This Lesson integrates critical instruction in research ethics that is applied to the science skill of communicating results. Student progress can be monitored using a summative homework-style assessment, in which students are tasked to determine which sentences in a paragraph should have citations and then to rank those sentences in order of how confident the group is that a citation is required. By the end of the Lesson, students have explored the definition of plagiarism and the ethical norms and processes for identifying when a citation is necessary.

Primary image: Text Duplication. Copying the work of others is plagiarism unless a proper citation is provided (copyright Joseph Ross).