[fledarmus]

English lit. majors have often called my term papers plagiarism.  They are simply collections of someone else's research, to be sure.  But their term isn't quite fair.  If you've taken a bunch of articles, found their similarities, combined them into one, crediting each point in your term paper with the original in the bibliography -- you have actually done something useful. 

Actually, this is closer to a description of what an English lit. major would recognize as "literary criticism" rather than plagiarism. Both criticism and scientific presentation involve extensive quoting of other authors' work and comparisons to still other authors and to accepted opinions. In both cases, you must make very clear distinctions between presenting the work of others and presenting your own conclusions and comparisons to avoid plagiarism.