I need to pop out my sudden 2am thought before I go to bed and forget it. Yeah, so I'm plowing through some research for my fic, and it just occurred to me, do you guys cite what you find? I.E. if I have a character in the story that shoots off a mouthful of info about cubic zirconia, do I need to indicate at the end where I found this info (because I knew nothing about the stuff beforehand). Just making sure I avoid the good 'ole plaigerism disaster here.

Ciao
Jen

Plagiarism deals mostly with using quotes and you don't give credit for that.

The purpose of research is to learn more about something. You are allowed to use that, but you need to put it in your own words. THere's nothing wrong with telling at the end which sources you used, but it's not strictly necessary.

That's how I see it, other may think differently.

Saskia

My first fic (the Trek one) was written right after I got out of grad school (note, not graduated from, but got out of...) - and I had no clue about how acknowlegements worked. So that's why I have a whole part at the end devoted to Bibliography - and yes, that's what I called it. I think if I was doing it again... oh duh! I *am* doing it again here under her Rock)

Yeah, okay. I'll just make sure I don't use direct quotes. But they always told us everytime I write research papers that *anything* you don't give credit for, quotes or paraphrasing was considered plaigerism.

There's no need to credit everything no. In Masques, I credited the makers of the brand of tazer I used simply because I lifted the text of the ad from its website almost verbatum for use in the story.

And if you were having your characters quote huge tracts of some RL Professor's scientific research, say - or, as you point out paraphrasing the text - you could always add a list of sources at the end of the story.

But other than that and in the circumstances you cite, Jen, just looking up the facts of everyday bits and pieces - no, you wouldn't have to worry about it.

LabRat