Your children will find and collect many different magazine articles, college-level and doctoral papers, and corporate studies while conducting research for their middle- and high-school writing assignments. Internet technology makes it especially easy to plagiarize, copy, steal and infringe on the rights of others during the process of completing these projects. But it's your job to make sure your child follows ethics and criminal law, so they won't get into trouble with their student homework. 

  • Use common sense. Someone likely owns the rights to the material your child is using. If the written material is not yours, don't steal it.  
  • Read Terms of Use policies on websites. Websites usually lay out the terms of use in a special policy document called Terms of Use. You might also look for a link called Permissions.  If you're unsure about how to use information obtained from a website appropriately, read the web document or send an email that describes how you'd like to use their information.
  • If you want to reproduce statements of another person or group in research materials you find, get permission from that party to do so, or give proper acknowledgement. Obtaining permission could be as simple as placing a phone call, sending an email or, if you have time, writing a letter. 
  • Don't use another person's verbal statements without his or her permission or without acknowledgement. This includes quotes you find in printed materials. If you're interviewing a subject for your report, simply make sure that person knows that the interview is being conducted as a source for a report. 
  • Don't paraphrase another person's verbal or written words without the person's permission or without acknowledgement. 
  • Don't use statistical data, artwork (including illustrations and photographs), or facts unless the information is common knowledge, without obtaining permission to use the information or without proper acknowledgement. 
  • Don't let someone else do your child's homework or conduct research for or write his or her report. 
  • Don't let your child work with others on a project and submit a report that he or she represents as solely his or her own work.

What's Proper Acknowledgement?

Usually notations with footnotes will be fine. Be sure to include any sourcing information you can provide in the footnotes. In cases of important points to your report, you likely will want to cite the source in the body of your text (i.e. "According to research conducted by NWO WorldGroup..."). If you do this, be sure you also give proper footnoted citations.

Different teachers in different subject areas may prefer different styles for citing sources in research papers. Three major academic styles include Chicago Style, MLA Style and the American Psychological Association (APA) Style.

It's important you teach your children early how to properly cite printed and verbal material in their own work to avoid trouble down the road.

Other Useful Links

Copyright Search: Find out who owns the rights to the material you found.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

The U.S. Copyright Office

Copyright Resources on the Internet

Plagiarism.org: A web site devoted to fighting plagiarism in high school and college.

Stanford University Copyright and Fair Use