Citations

The 2024-2025 TLU Student Handbook states:

Dishonesty Policy

Any form of dishonesty is a violation of personal integrity and unworthy of an academic community. Such dishonesty includes cheating; lying; plagiarism; forgery; falsification of university records; supplying false information; unauthorized possession of university property; unauthorized possession and/or publication of university lists, records, or information protected through confidentiality agreements , and/or laws; unauthorized entry into facilities; the misuse of student identification cards; misrepresentation of one’s self; using artificial intelligence software to generate or review ideas, text, and/or media of any kind in a way that is not in line with the AI policy of the published course syllabus and/or assignment; directly quoting or paraphrasing AI-generated text and/or media of any kind without citing the AI source(s) according to discipline-specific conventions and assuming instructor permission. Violations of this policy will result in disciplinary action and may result in suspension or expulsion from the university.

The TLU Student Handbook defines plagiarism in this way:

Plagiarism - includes, but is not limited to, the use, by paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished work of another person without full and clear acknowledgment. It also includes the unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another person or agency engaged in the selling of term papers or other academic materials.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary plagiarism is “The action or practice of taking someone else's work, idea, etc., and passing it off as one's own.” 

Simpson, J. A., and E. S. C. Weiner. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. / prepared by J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner., Clarendon Press, 1989.

Here are some tips to help you avoid plagiarism.

• Do not procrastinate.  Plan ahead. Schedule your work. Researching and synthesizing ideas takes time.  When one waits until the last minute, it can cause a person to be in a desperate mindset and make poor decisions. 
• Take good notes. Write down your impressions as you are reading the sources and make sure you include the sources in your notes. 
• Cite, cite, cite, cite.  When in doubt, cite.  Use the style manuals to help you cite properly.
• Learn how to cite direct quotations as well as paraphrasing the original creator's words. 
• Evaluate all the information you have gathered looking for biases and errors.
• Do not take information out of context or cherry pick information merely to further your research goal. 
• Acquire the knowledge from your resources and be prepared to discuss not only the content but your research process and source selections. 
• Do not try to use other people's work or generative AI compositions as your own composition. 
• Ask for assistance from your instructor, the Student Communication Center or a librarian.

TLU librarians strongly recommend that you do your research in TLU library databases or Google Scholar which can be linked to TLU resources.  By doing this, you will find real citations and, often, links to the full text of the cited articles which are behind paywalls on the Internet.  

Generative AI tools are enticing to students because they are so simple to use.  However, they are notorious for not relying fully on factual information or research strategies.  In fact, they are known for producing "hallucinations."   

Explanation of Hallucinations from Loyola Notre Dame Library AI Hallucinations - Artificial Intelligence - Research Guides at Loyola / Notre Dame Library:

AI hallucinations occur when Generative AI tools produce incorrect, misleading, or nonexistent content. Content may include facts, citations to sources, code, historical events, and other real-world information. Remember that large language models, or LLMs, are trained on massive amounts of data to find patterns; they, in turn, use these patterns to predict words and then generate new content. The fabricated content is presented as though it is factual, which can make AI hallucinations difficult to identify. A common AI hallucination in higher education happens when users prompt text tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to cite references or peer-reviewed sources. These tools scrape data that exists on this topic and create new titles, authors, and content that do not actually exist.

The amount of time that students spend trying to locate fake citations could have been better spent finding real citations in factual databases. 

Always follow the parameters of your assignment and course syllabus. Ask your instructor for clarification on what is permissible.  Be prepared to explain your research process and supply copies of your source materials.

Here are some recommended websites for organizing your research process.

Google Scholar is a freely-accessible web search engine that provides a simple way to search for scholarly literature.  However, we do not know the full scope of what is covered because the indexing is not published. 

Here is a LibGuide on Google Scholar.

Google Scholar