Suppose I’m writing an assignment about a subject on which it’s hard to get hold of the appropriate texts: they’re all out of the library and some are unobtainable anyway. Further suppose that I find on the web an article in which someone provides a quotation from one of these works.
If I just used the quotation, with references to the original book, and didn’t mention the web page, would that be plagiarism?
thanks!
Yup.
Technically, it’s a violation of academic integrity (I’ll leave the strict definitions of “plagiarism” to the nit-pickers. ) To protect yourself, mention the web page. That way, if THEY fucked up (misquoted, quoted from the wrong source, invented the source altogether, etc.) you’re protected. protesting after geting caught “B-b-b-but I never saw the actual book, I was actually quoting form a website—” won’t do you that much good, since you are in effect claiming to have quoted from whichever source you cite.
To truly qualify as plagiarism, you’d need to claim or imply that the text is your own work.
I’ll second the ‘yup!’. What’s wrong with referencing the webpage? Normal convention is to reference the title of the article, author (if known) and date accessed. At the university I work at, that is as acceptable as a reference to a book or journal.
PS. If you are quoting from a site that is quoting another source, you normally just add ‘quoted in (or on, for a www reference) …’ at the beginning of the footnote.
Since you are giving a citation, you probably won’t be accused of plagiarism. However, it is bad citation practice. I don’t know what style you’re using, but I would write something like:
Name, Author (of Book), “Title of Book.” <standard publishing info>, as quoted on <website>, maintained by <webmaster>
… or some such. IAN your teacher/professor, etc. I’d double check that format, if I were you.
This is called using a “secondary source,” and your favorite style guide should have a discussion of citation format. Here they listing the secondary source only (the Web page, in your case) in the reference list, but using the form “Such-and-so (as cited in This-and-that)” in the main text.
In my opinion, this isn 't plagiarism. It is just bad, dishonest citation, as others have said.
If one of my students did this, and i found out, i’d explain to them why it was not acceptable, and show them the correct way to make such citations. But i wouldn’t accuse them of plagiarism.
The problem with relying on second-hand quotations is that you cannot be completely certain that your source has quoted the original source properly or in context. This is especially a problem on an unregulated medium like the internet. It may be that your second-hand quotation appears to support one position, but that if you actually went to the original you might find that the author’s position is quite different than the one represented by your intermediary.
Strictly speaking, you’re correct, mhendo. But it’s still very dangerous because, as I said, if the web site messed up anything related to plagiarism (like giving imaginary sources, say, or piping the quotes it contained altogether), then the OP would still be responsible for the violation. it’s much easier to [sic] your sources if you’re citing them in the first place.