Determining Intellectual Property Rights

Intellectual property is defined as material or ideas envisioned and created by another person. There are many kinds of intellectual property, including books, articles, essays, stories, poems, films, photographs, works of art or craft, or even just ideas. For example, if you copy text out of a textbook or article and use it in your homework assignment so it looks like you wrote it – that’s plagiarism. If someone else thought of an idea and brought it into the world, they own it, and if you use their idea in your work, you have to acknowledge them as the actual owner. If you don’t, you’ve committed plagiarism.

Plagiarism is a kind of academic dishonesty—a kind of theft. Post-secondary institutions take plagiarism seriously; assignments can get a grade of zero, and many institutions discipline or even expel learners who are found to be plagiarizing.

So how can you avoid plagiarism? It’s actually quite simple (Shier, 2020):

1. As much as possible, do your own work. In other words, always start by writing what you know about a subject, turning to sources only when you need to support your own ideas with authoritative backing or when there’s a knowledge gap you cannot fill on your own. Or, of course, to satisfy requirements imposed by your instructor or professor, who may ask you to use a certain number of sources in completing an assignment. But even then, much of the work should be your own.
2. Take notes carefully. If you add source material to your work, mark it or identify it in such a way that you will know it’s from a source. Cite the work immediately and add it to your works cited list.
3. If you use someone else’s intellectual property, give them credit. If you bring others’ work into your assignment, you must mention them as the work’s owners by citing your source in an accepted format (e.g., A.P.A., M.L.A., Chicago). You will learn more about citing information later in this module.

Check out this video for more information about academic integrity and how to avoid plagiarism in post-secondary education.

Video 3.3
Source: The Learning Portal / Le Portail d’Apprentissage. (2019, September 9). Plagiarism and You [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYhGPHAnFak 
Length: 5:40

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Guidelines for Using Information

In today’s digital age, with information seemingly at our fingertips, it’s important to understand some of the guidelines and restrictions that affect how we use that information, so we use sources correctly and avoid plagiarism. Copyright, fair dealing, and fair use are longstanding legal guidelines for information use (Shier, 2020).

• Copyright is a legal term that refers to the person (or people) who own and distribute a piece of information. The copyright holder has rights to that material, and if others use the material without getting permission first, they may be in violation of copyright. And it can result in fines. The Canadian Guide to Copyright is your go-to location for everything you need to know about copyright in Canada.
• Fair dealing is a legal term pertaining to users’ rights in Canada under copyright law. There are provisions that allow people to use parts of copyrighted material for specific purposes. Fair dealing provides ways for people to use others’ copyrighted work without infringing on the author’s copyright, which is especially important for learners and educators when using and sharing information in research assignments and projects.
• Fair use allows learners and educators to use small amounts of copyrighted materials for a short-term, limited purpose—particularly for study, teaching, or research. The four factors determining fairness include purpose and character of the use; nature of the copyrighted work; amount and substantiality of the portion of the work used; and the effect of the use on the potential market or value of the work (Shier, 2020).

There are also newer guidelines and distinctions you need to be aware of when using open access, online sources: Creative Commons, Open Educational Resources (O.E.R.s), and Traditional Knowledge (T.K.) and Biocultural (B.C.) Labels. 

• Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization that collects all sorts of materials and makes them available to the public for free use. When a user creates a piece of content (writing, art, photography, or just about anything), they may choose to put a Creative Commons licence on the material. The licence explains how people share, remix, re-purpose, or use the material in other ways (Shier, 2020).
  • As a learner, the Creative Commons has made a world of materials available to you. If you use any of the materials in your work, you should include the Creative Commons in your source citation. Learn how to cite material using Creative Commons.
• Open Educational Resources (O.E.R.s) are teaching and learning materials that are available for free use by learners and instructors everywhere because they are under an open licence, such as a Creative Commons licence. The move toward O.E.R.s has really taken off recently—both to take advantage of the internet and digital publishing and also to help control the skyrocketing cost of textbooks. Open resources are easy to access and use and are continually updated and revised (Shier, 2020).
• Traditional Knowledge (T.K.) and Biocultural (B.C.) Labels are an initiative for Indigenous communities and local organizations. Developed through sustained partnership and testing within Indigenous communities across multiple countries, the Labels allow communities to express local and specific conditions for sharing and engaging in future research and relationships in ways that are consistent with already existing community rules, governance and protocols for using, sharing and circulating knowledge and data. Communities customize their T.K. and B.C. Labels using the Local Contexts Hub, which allows community control over customization and delivery to institutions, data repositories, and other organizations (Local Contexts, n.d.). 
  • The T.K. Labels identify and clarify community-specific rules and responsibilities regarding access and future use of traditional knowledge. This includes sacred and/or ceremonial material, material that has gender restrictions, seasonal conditions of use, and/or materials specifically designed for outreach purposes (Local Contexts, n.d.).
  • The B.C. Labels define community expectations about appropriate use of biocultural collections and data. The B.C. Labels focus on accurate provenance, transparency and integrity in research engagements with Indigenous communities. The B.C. Labels ensure Indigenous people are represented in the metadata and create opportunities for future researchers to connect and support appropriate benefit sharing (Local Contexts, n.d.).

Citing Information 

Once you have researched quality sources of information and summarized or paraphrased or directly quoted a source, you will have to correctly reference your sources (also called citing your sources). There are some standard ways of using sources that let your readers know this material is from other texts rather than original ideas from your own brain. Following these specific guidelines also allows your readers to locate those sources if they are interested in the topic and want to know more about what they say.

Giving credit to the sources you used while creating a text is important (and useful) for several reasons (Shier, 2022):

• It adds to your own credibility as an author by showing you have done appropriate research on your topic and approached your work ethically.
• It gives credit to the original author and their work for the ideas you found to be useful, and in giving them credit, it helps you avoid unintentionally plagiarizing their work.
• It gives your readers additional resources (already curated by you in your research process) that they can go to if they want to read about your topic further.

For post-secondary coursework and research, this generally means two things: in-text or parenthetical citation (throughout the body of your work) and a “Works Cited” or “References” page (at the end of your work). What these two things look like will be a little different for different types of courses.

You should generally check with your instructors about their preferred form of citation when you write papers for courses. No one standard is used in all academic papers. You can learn about the three major forms or styles used in most university writing handbooks and on many websites such as Purdue OWL.

• The American Psychological Association (A.P.A.) system of citation is widely used across many disciplines, including social sciences, natural sciences, education, business, and engineering.
  • Learn more about A.P.A. style from Purdue OWL.
• The Modern Language Association (M.L.A.) system of citation is widely used but is most commonly adopted in humanities courses, such as literature, languages, and philosophy.
  • Learn more about M.L.A. style from Purdue OWL.
• The Chicago Manual of Style (C.MOS) is widely used but perhaps most commonly used in history and the arts.
  • Learn more about Chicago style from Purdue OWL.

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Try It!

Let’s practice creating citations!

• Pick a book, a peer-reviewed journal article, and a website.
• Create a citation for each source in the format most commonly used in your discipline (e.g., A.P.A., M.L.A., Chicago).
• Try using a citation generator such as Scribbr.
• Refer to Purdue OWL as needed.
• Exchange tips for creating citations with some peers.

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Activity

Now, let’s help Shayan identify which citation format was used for each source.

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