Plagiarism and how to avoid it

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism means passing off another person's thoughts or words as if they were your own. Plagiarism must be avoided, particularly in coursework including essays, project reports and dissertations. Passing off another student's work as your own is a clear case of plagiarism.

Plagiarism is treated very seriously by examiners at UK universities and could result in your failing your degree.

Some cases of plagiarism are clearly deliberate attempts to cheat: quoting verbatim without acknowledgement, passing off another student's work as your own, buying an essay from an online provider. Others reflect sloppy methods of study, for example copying a passage in your note-taking without keeping a record of the source, and ‘forgetting’ that this was not your own work. If you do this it is still a case of plagiarism; the rules do not require proof of intent.  

Self-plagiarism

A piece of work may be submitted for assessment only once. Submitting the same piece of work twice will be regarded as an offence of ‘self-plagiarism’; this applies both to work undertaken on the MSc and work submitted for a previous degree. However, earlier essay work may be used as an element of a dissertation, provided that the use of earlier work is properly referenced and does not amount to more than 10% of the total. 

How plagiarism is detected and the consequences

Examiners usually have a good ‘nose’ for plagiarism, and plagiarism-detection software is increasingly sophisticated. It is policy that all assessed work is submitted in both hard copy and electronic form, and work is checked with anti-plagiarism software.

Also don’t forget the power of modern search engines – two years ago a single sentence submitted to Google turned up the original article in seconds!

 

How to avoid plagiarism

It is not difficult to avoid an accusation of plagiarism. The simple rule is that direct quotations from the published or unpublished work of others must always be clearly identified as such, by being placed inside quotation marks with a full reference to their

source, including exact page numbers. Likewise, if you paraphrase or summarize another person's ideas or judgments, you must refer to that person in your text, giving page references as appropriate, and include the work referred to in your bibliography. A series of short quotations from several different sources, if not clearly identified as such, constitutes plagiarism just as much as does a single unacknowledged long quotation from a single source.

It is also a form of plagiarism if you imply that you have read a book or article which you have not, and are in fact citing second-hand: you should make clear the source you have used by writing, for example, ‘(Jones 1983, cited in Bloggs 2001)’.

In Summary

 All text quoted directly from another source must be so indicated by the use of quotation marks, with precise page references to the source

You do not escape this requirement by changing particular words if the sense is the same as the original on which your text is based

If you summarize or paraphrase sentences or passages from a source you must likewise give exact page references

You must not give the impression that you have read works which you have only seen cited elsewhere.