Merrimack College's Academic Integrity Code (AIC), is a collection of policies that defines academic dishonesty, and outlines the procedures and penalties that result from violations. It is the student’s responsibility to be familiar with this policy.  Plagiarism, cheating, and other forms of academic dishonesty explained in the AIC are serious offenses.

Academic dishonesty not only includes copying from books, articles, and the Internet, but copying from other students’ papers as well.  All sources for ideas that are not your own in papers must be cited and the use of exact words from other works should be set off in quotation marks and cited. 

Violation of the AIC carries consequences up to failure of the class and potential for further disciplinary action.

Plagiarism is intellectual theft. At Merrimack, the failure to acknowledge the intellectual contributions of others is considered plagiarism. It is important to avoid even unintentional plagiarism by being familiar with accepted ways to acknowledge sources and by developing good note-taking and research habits. -Merrimack College's AIC 

Turnitin.com's "The Plagiarism Spectrum" explains common forms of plagiarism into easy-to-remember terms and definitions: