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v2026.1714 entries · CC-BY 4.0
CASRAI
Dictionary termTrack DStablev2026.2

Plagiarism

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 21 May 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quotation marks or citation, through paraphrasing without attribution (mosaic plagiarism), to misappropriation of unpublished ideas encountered in peer review or grant review.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

Also known as

text plagiarism · idea plagiarism · mosaic 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",
  "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-and-misconduct/",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/plagiarism",
  "sameAs": [
    "text plagiarism",
    "idea plagiarism",
    "mosaic plagiarism"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
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