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WAB Faculty & Staff

MS Academic Integrity Review: Acknowledging Sources

What do you mean, "acknowledge my sources?"

Acknowledging sources means providing written recognition* of any ideas that are used or adapted for students' work. WAB uses MLA citation style, which means:

  • You need to provide the name of the original author and details of where you found the information at the end in your Works Cited list.
  • You need to acknowledge sources within the body of a work in parentheses.

 

The only exception is "common knowledge."  Most people know, for example, that Columbus "discovered" America,  that Paris is the capital of France, and that China is a communist country.  Those facts are considered common knowledge, and would not need to be cited.

*'Referencing', 'citing' and 'attribution' are terms often used to refer to the acknowledgement of sources.

 

 

excerpt from: HSC: All My Own Work

http://amow.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/module2/module2s1.html

Discuss the Scenario

Ethical or not?

You have just completed a research paper for one of your science classes. On your final check, you realise that you forgot to acknowledge the source of one of the key ideas used in your paper. Worse still, you have lost the details of the source and really can't be bothered spending additional time searching for details of the source. You decide to submit the work as it is, assuming everything will be OK, because your teacher will never know.