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Plagiarism happens when your work does not have your own distinctive voice. It is the failure to be original. It is passing off someone else's ideas, words, or analytical frameworks as your own, intentionally or not. It is intellectual theft. It undermines the purpose of your education. Occasionally, there are flagrant examples of plagiarism: copying, purchasing, or stealing someone else's paper and turning it in as your own; copying out a whole section directly from a book, an article, or off the Web and putting it into your paper without showing where you got it from; or including important facts or data without citing a source. But often plagiarism is unintentional or unconscious. For example, you may like what a source says and actually quote a sentence from it directly and put a footnote to the source. But if you then go on to paraphrase or summarize more from the same source without another footnote acknowledging that you are still drawing on that source, it looks like you are pretending that other person's ideas are yours.
Frameworks
If you borrow someone else's analytical framework without pointing out to the reader that this is what you are doing, you are still unjustly passing off someone else's intellectual work as your own. So, for example, if you read an article by Arthur Finkelstein where he claims "There are two forms of nationalism in China: ethnic and religious," you cannot simply repeat this in your paper. You have to say, "According to Finkelstein, Chinese nationalism comes in two forms. One is ethnic. The other is religious." You can then proceed to use his framework to help make sense of the material you are looking at. But you have to be clear that you are doing so. This does not make you less original or intelligent. Writers of all sorts do this all the time. You just have to be clear about it. Otherwise you are committing plagiarism. Good history is a cumulative enterprise: it builds on the work of earlier scholars and furnishes a basis future scholars will use as their point of departure. Robert Merton, a sociologist who understood these things as well as anyone, explained that as scholars we stand on the shoulders of giants. Yes, we see farther than our predecessors did, but without their work to support us our understanding would be extremely limited. Quotations both acknowledge your debt to other scholars and illustrate how you are building on their ideas. For this reason, it is important to keep the quotes brief, and make sure that they illustrate a point of yours. Just presenting long quotes from important scholars, even if you agree with everything they say, does not let your reader understand your thinking. You have to put things in your own words and let the reader know why you agree with a particular interpretation.
When you write a paper, you become part of a cumulative enterprise of history writing. Taking advantage of the work of previous scholars means you're in the fortunate position of not having to re-invent the wheel. At the same time, your voice adds to the discussion that keeps the common stock of knowledge growing. Make sure your reader can see it!
Notes
A number of students, and even the occasional professional historian, have been caught plagiarizing because they took sloppy notes. Be careful when doing your research. Remember that the main goal is not just to absorb the information but also to distinguish your ideas from those of the source--even when you agree with it. If you are copying down a whole passage, put in the quotes and note the page number. You can also write down whatever ideas come to you while you are reading the source, but be sure to distinguish these from what you are copying out of the source itself. You can put the thoughts in parentheses, or in a different script, or on a different part of the page. If you are taking notes on a computer, keep them in a separate file from your paper.
The History Department treats issues of academic integrity on a case-by-case basis, but there is a Columbia University plagiarism policy of which you should be aware (http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/universitypolicies.php#plagiarism). Note that it says: "[A]cademic dishonesty is one of the most serious offenses that a student can commit at Columbia. It is punishable by suspension or dismissal from the College."
If you want to learn more about plagiarism, or test your knowledge, please review this online tutorial (http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/plag/plagiarismtutorial.php).
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