Plagiarism is defined as adopting, appropriating for one’s own use and/or incorporating in one’s own work, without acknowledgement, passages, tables, photographs, models, figures, and illustrations from the writings or works of others, presenting parts of passages of other’s writing as products of one’s own mind. The concept of plagiarism also extends to the copying of quiz, written, or lab practical examination questions, OSCE cases, or clinical case scenarios used in the classroom or small group sessions, in any form or manner, including memorizing the material so it can be written down and passed on to others at a later time. Plagiarism of testing materials is cheating and constitutes an activity that is unprofessional and against the ethical tenets of the medical profession.
Plagiarism will be taken very seriously in the College of Medicine and could lead to action up to and including dismissal. This notice is to inform students that the College of Medicine reserves the right to utilize, with or without the students’ knowledge, plagiarism detection services or software. Written work may be compared to a database of texts, journals, electronic and web sources including web sites that sell or distribute pre-written essays or term papers. The College reserves the right to use one of these plagiarism detection systems at any time, on any work submitted by a student in any course or clerkship.