AVS 249: Laboratory and Companion Animal Science

Anatomy of a Scholarly Article - This resources from NCSU will help you identify the sections of a Scholarly Article. 

Each part will answer essential questions about the research/article: 

What is this article about? (Abstract, Introduction)

What do we already know about this topic and what is left to discover? (Literature Review)

How did the author do the research? (Methods & Data)

What did the author find and how did they find it? (Analysis & Results)

What does it all mean and why is it important? (Conclusion & Discussion)

Plagiarism can have serious consequences both within the University and in the working world. Within the UMaine campus, plagiarism can be penalized academically by your professor and subject to action under the Student Conduct Code. The maximum punishment for plagiarism under this code is expulsion from the University. 

Things you MUST cite: 

• Words or ideas presented in a magazine, book, newspaper, song, TV program, movie, Web page, computer program, letter, advertisement, or any other medium
• Information you gain through interviewing or conversing with another person, face to face, over the phone, or in writing
• When you copy the exact words or a unique phrase
• When you reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts, pictures, or other visual materials
• When you reuse or repost any electronically-available media, including images, audio, video, or other media

Things you DO NOT have to cite: 

• Writing your own lived experiences, your own observations and insights, your own thoughts, and your own conclusions about a subject
• When you are writing up your own results obtained through lab or field experiments
• When you use your own artwork, digital photographs, video, audio, etc.
• When you are using "common knowledge," things like folklore, common sense observations, myths, urban legends, and historical events (but not historical documents)
• When you are using generally-accepted facts, e.g., pollution is bad for the environment, including facts that are accepted within particular discourse communities, e.g., in the field of composition studies, "writing is a process" is a generally-accepted fact.

From Purdue Owl 

Avoiding Plagiarism:

How to Avoid Plagiarism

This guide from the Harvard College Writing Program outlines the best practices to follow when writing to avoid plagiarism, both intentional and unintentional. The basic idea is to:

"1) understand what you're doing when you write a paper
 2) follow a method that is systematic and careful as you do your research" 

Find out more information about conducting research responsibly and how to create a workflow that discourages plagiarism from the How to Avoid Plagiarism guide.