Helium™ Plagiarism Guidelines

Our goal at Helium is to become a respected source for knowledge, where writers will provide their written content, confident that their Articles will remain credited to the appropriate author.

Our contributing writers are our most valuable resource, and we want to protect their work and give them appropriate credit for their efforts.

As a writer, it is in your best interest to respect other’s works and copyrights. We’ve written these guidelines to prevent plagiarism and other copyright violations.

Copyright

Copyright protection begins from the moment a work is created; no registration is needed. To qualify for copyright protection a work must be “original” (an expression of the author’s own creative, intellectual activity). The mere fact that you don’t find a copyright notice on another author’s work does not mean it is not protected. Copyrighted material can be used according to the “doctrine of fair use”. You can read more about this on the U.S. Copyright Office – Fair Use site.

We expect you, as a writer with Helium, to respect existing copyright law. A little advice: If you are in doubt as to whether any given text is protected by copyright, you should assume that it is.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of copying the work of another person and claiming it as your own. The simplest form of plagiarism on Helium is easy to recognize. If you copy another writer’s article or an article found on the Internet word-for-word and post it again under your own name – that is plagiarism. Intra Site Plagiarism and Extra-Site Plagiarism are treated equally. We delete the article, and for repeat offenders, the user account.

Intra-Site Plagiarism

First, let’s deal with Intra-Site Plagiarism (copying another Helium writer’s content). These guidelines apply to both copyright protected and non-copyright-protected content. Let’s take a look at what behaviors are considered forms of plagiarism:

• NOT OK- Copying another writer’s article
• NOT OK- Copying another writer’s article and just changing a few words…
• NOT OK- Copying another writer’s article and just adding a few of your own words.
• MAY be OK- Quoting a part of another writer’s article: if you need part of the other writer’s article to support your own thoughts, or as a basis for a discussion etc – then name your source and use quotation marks to designate the borrowed material.
• OK- Getting inspiration from other writers to write your own article with your own words and your own thoughts.

Extra-Site Plagiarism

Extra-Site Plagiarism refers to copying content from any source other than helium.com. The OK’s and NOT OK’s noted above also apply to content found elsewhere.

About quoting

If you elect to support your contribution with material from another source, you must quote the source. If you use material from another source, but elect not to quote the source, you have plagiarized. Identifying (citing) the source you are quoting should be specific, such that it enables another reader of your article to find the original source. Typically, citing material from the Internet requires that the URL that leads to the specific page of the content is pasted with the copied content at the end of the article.

It is not possible to give numbers on how many words or what percentage of a text you are allowed to quote. And it is not always a simple yes or no answer as to whether a given act would be plagiarism. It depends on the circumstances. It is never appropriate to pull the entirety of another work from another source, even if you quote the source. We certainly encourage writers to conduct research and to learn from others, but the end result needs to be your own work.

A rule of thumb when you are quoting: Your own contribution should be the major part of the article as a whole both in terms of number of words and the overall idea or meaning of that article.

An illustrative example:

Article title: The taste of water

Article 1. Water is tasteless. By John Doe.

Article 2. “Water is tasteless” says John Doe. I only agree to a certain point. I think cold water tastes better than warm water because it’s fresher. By Jane Doe.

Article 3. A number of factors influence the taste of water. Temperature is one, but also the content of calcium and iron will have an impact on the taste. By Dr. Doe.

Jane Doe quotes John Doe, and adds her own perspective. That’s OK.

Dr. Doe gets inspiration from Jane Doe, and goes towards a ‘scientific’ explanation. That’s OK.

Report plagiarism

Helium provides tools to report plagiarism. If you are a logged-in Helium writer, you will find a ‘Tools’ link in the upper right corner of the screen. Click that link, and you will get a pop up window with further instructions. Also, when rating articles, you can report plagiarism with one click if you are asked to rate two articles that seem identical. If you are not logged-in, and if you find a plagiarized article on Helium, you can click here to Report Plagiarism. This link will bring up a new email where you will be asked to specify your plagiarism report.

It is of utmost importance that we maintain a high level of reliability and quality in the content on our site. Plagiarism will be handled according to Helium’s User Agreement, and the final decision in such cases will always be made by Helium.