Whether intentional or unintentional, plagiarism, or presenting others people’s ideas as one’s own, is a serious offense and is a sign of poor academic practice. The penalties for committing plagiarism are determined by the honor code or ethical guidelines at a school or university and can range from getting a lower grade on a task or failing a course, to being expelled from university. This implies that any idea, scientific insight, or result in an another author’s work has to be properly acknowledged or referenced unless one is reporting facts which have become common knowledge. Copying the exact wording from the original source (even if just a few words) without putting it in quotation marks is an instance of plagiarism even when the source is referenced properly. If the original wording from a source text has been changed but no reference has been provided to the source, this is yet another instance of plagiarism.
Citations, or references to the work cited in the paper (proposal), allow the writer to avoid plagiarizing other authors’ ideas and content as well as fulfil the following functions: