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Secondary Source Plagiarism: Facts & How To Avoid It

Table of Contents

Plagiarism: An Overview
What is Secondary Source Plagiarism?
Example of Secondary Source Plagiarism
How to Avoid Secondary Source Plagiarism
To Wrap Up
Secondary Source Plagiarism is taking material from a secondary source and using it
in a manner that does not acknowledge the secondary source. This is a common type
of plagiarism violation in academia.

This article discusses secondary source plagiarism and suggests ways to avoid it.

Plagiarism: An Overview
Plagiarism is a form of academic misconduct that includes using the ideas, and
words of another person without proper attribution. It is the act of taking someone
else’s work and passing it off as your own.

Plagiarism is a punishable offense, and anyone who uses someone else’s work without
their permission or giving appropriate credit is considered guilty of plagiarism.
However, you can use other people’s information and ideas, as long as you credit
them.

What is Secondary Source Plagiarism?

Secondary source of information elaborates on the data from the primary source. A
secondary source can be a book, a magazine article, an online article, or even a
website or a news agency. A secondary source consists of content that is often
derivative of other authors’ work – the primary source.

Secondary source information is commonly written in narrative form. This makes it

easy for individuals to copy and use the information – not fully understanding the
original and not attributing the source. A researcher may use secondary source data
but only cite the primary sources within the secondary source. This is secondary
source plagiarism.

Secondary source plagiarism refers to borrowing information from secondary sources

without adequately citing and referencing the source. This is the kind of
plagiarism that can get you accused of duplicating material and hurting the
source’s reputation.

In secondary source plagiarism, an author uses the information from an existing

work without giving credit to the secondary source. Secondary source plagiarism
fails to attribute the author of the secondary source.

different books with colored covers in a brown cupboard

Photo by Dan Rowden on Unsplash
Example of Secondary Source Plagiarism
Consider this scenario: A student needs to research a particular topic. In
searching for relevant literature about the subject, the student comes across a
book in line with his topic. Going through the book, he comes across references
pertinent to his subject.

However, he can not obtain the original works cited in the text. He decides to
paraphrase the information from the book, but instead of citing the source author,
he uses the references cited in the book. This means the student cites the primary
source but fails to cite the secondary source – the book.
This way, the student has not