The appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. A passage or idea counts as plagiarised if a reasonable reader would attribute it to the new author when the substance originated with someone else.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 17 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
Copying three paragraphs from another author's published review article into one's own manuscript without quotation marks or citation.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
Quoting another author's sentence in quotation marks with a complete citation and page number.

Editorial commentary

Plagiarism spans a spectrum from verbatim copying of text without quotation marks or citation, through paraphrasing without attribution (mosaic plagiarism), to misappropriation of unpublished ideas encountered in peer review or grant review. It is distinct from copyright infringement (a legal concept) and from self-plagiarism (which involves one’s own prior work). COPE flowcharts provide standard editorial responses depending on the extent and intentionality.

References

COPE Core Practices (2017)
US Office of Research Integrity, 42 CFR Part 93 (2005)

Also known as

text plagiarism · idea plagiarism · mosaic plagiarism · incremental plagiarism

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Plagiarism"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/plagiarism" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/plagiarism",
  "name": "Plagiarism",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/plagiarism",
  "description": "The appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. A passage or idea counts as plagiarised if a reasonable reader would attribute it to the new author when the substance originated with someone else.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-integrity#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/plagiarism",
  "sameAs": [
    "text plagiarism",
    "idea plagiarism",
    "mosaic plagiarism",
    "incremental plagiarism"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-17T19:52:37",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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