Policy

Acts of plagiarism will not be tolerated and may result in the denial of the requested status and/or discontinuance. Candidates must ensure accurate citation of all non-original work included in submitted documents – including work previously published by the candidate in a different document/source.

Definition

Plagiarism is defined as copying others’ work and submitting it as your own. Plagiarism may be intentional or unintentional. Plagiarism may include (but is not limited to):

• Submitting someone else’s work as your own, in whole or in part
• Copying sentences or ideas from someone else without giving credit (citation)
• Failing to identify a quote with quotation marks
• Providing incorrect information about the source of a quotation
• Changing words but essentially copying the sentence structure or general idea of a source without providing credit
• Copying so many words or ideas from a source (or sources) that it comprises much of the submitted work, whether credit is given or not

(All the above is adapted from: http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/what-is-plagiarism)

Procedure

The BOM uses iThenticate to check submitted documents for plagiarism. Any document submitted to the dCOM or the BOM may be checked. At a minimum, candidates pursuing the following will have their written material submitted:

• Provisional membership and commissioning
• Associate membership and recognition of orders
• Full membership and ordination as a deacon or elder

The conference registrar will oversee the submissions and provide an initial interpretation of results. For material submitted to the dCOM, instances of suspected plagiarism will be forwarded to the dCOM chair for action by the committee and/or interview team.