Citing same sources as another student- is this plagiarism?

[AlwaysAQuestion]

Is it considered plagiarism if you are citing the same sources as another student? The content of the paper is not the same, only the sources cited seem to match up.

[rising_star]

I don't see how that would be plagiarism...

[juilletmercredi]

If the papers are on the same or similar topics, I would expect that the sources would be pretty much the same...

[AlwaysAQuestion]

I submitted this assignment through SafeAssign, and it is matching my sources to "another student's paper" by 36%. Should I be concerned?

[fuzzylogician]

No, using the same sources as another student is not plagiarism.

[Hank Scorpio]

You could use all the exact same sources as another student and it wouldn't be plagiarism.

[PauseRewind]

Like the other posters, I'd except many of the same sources as an earlier paper on the same topic, and 36% similar sources seems normal to me.

And I guess Hank might be right about using all the same exact sources not amounting to plagiarism per say- I have no idea whether it would or not. . . . That being said, I can't see 100% of the same sources (i.e. no additional ones) being ok for a professor, for several reasons . . . especially if that other paper was published more than a year ago

[Hank Scorpio]

And I guess Hank might be right about using all the same exact sources not amounting to plagiarism per say- I have no idea whether it would or not. . . . That being said, I can't see 100% of the same sources (i.e. no additional ones) being ok for a professor, for several reasons . . . especially if that other paper was published more than a year ago

Ah yes! I was thinking more about two papers from students in the same class, especially if it's an author course.

[TakeruK]

If I was grading some papers on a "general" topic for e.g. a first year intro course (where I wouldn't expect students to write on such similar topics that they would have exactly the same sources), and I came across two papers that had identical bibliographies, it would raise a flag of potential plagiarism, but 100% identical sources in itself isn't plagiarism. I would then (re)read the actual paper and decide.

On the other hand, if I was grading a lab report (I know this isn't the OP's case but giving another perspective), then I would almost expect the sources (for standard values of certain quantities) to be exactly the same.