Avoiding plagiarism

What is plagiarism?

“ … the conscious or unconscious use of words or ideas from someone else’s work without acknowledgement, with the result that the work appears to be your own”

Barrington Library

Information Literacy Tutorial

What is plagiarism?

• Quoting someone’s words without acknowledgement

• Paraphrasing someone’s words without acknowledgement

• Using someone’s ideas, opinions without acknowledgement

This is with reference to written work or oral words.

Some dictionaries also mention the term “close imitation” of others’ ideas and words.

How can plagiarism occur?

Original TextThe domain of leaders is the future. The leader’s unique legacy is the creation of valued institutions that survive over time. The most significant contribution leaders make is not simply to today’s bottom line; it is to the long term development of people and institutions so they can adapt, change, prosper, and grow.Kouzes, J.M. and Posner, B.Z. (2007) The leadership challenge. 4th ed. Chichester: John Wiley, p xvi

Copy and paste

I believe the domain of leaders is the future. The leader’s unique legacy is the creation of valued institutions that survive over time. The most significant contribution leaders make is not simply to today’s bottom line; it is to the long term development of people and institutions so they can adapt, change, prosper, and grow. It is only...

When text is copied exactly from a book, report, journal article, webpage, etc., credit must be paid to the original author by putting the text in double quotes and citing the original author in your reference list. In the example above credit is not given and plagiarism is committed.

Copy and paste

As per Kouzes and Posner (2007, p xvi)

“the domain of leaders is the future. The leader’s unique legacy is the creation of valued institutions that survive over time. The most significant contribution leaders make is not simply to today’s bottom line; it is to the long term development of people and institutions so they can adapt, change, prosper, and grow”.

It is only...

Reference list

Kouzes, J.M. and Posner, B.Z. (2007) The leadership challenge. 4th ed. Chichester: John Wiley

Paraphrasing

The sign of a good leader is one who builds organisations that continue to grow and prosper. Their most valuable input is not just to the profit of an organisation; it is in the training of their staff and the investment into their business that allows it to be flexible, flourish and expand.

If you paraphrase you must still give credit to the original author:

The sign of a good leader is one who builds organisations that continue to grow and prosper. Their most valuable input is not just to the profit of an organisation; it is in the training of their staff and the investment into their business that allows it to be flexible, flourish and expand (Kouzes and Posner, 2007).

Reference list

Kouzes, J.M. and Posner, B.Z. (2007) The leadership challenge. 4th ed. Chichester: John Wiley

Other examples of plagiarism

• Citing a reference you have not read – where possible always try to read the source document. If this is not possible, include a reference such as: Grace (2003), cited in Davis (2006) advised that “leadership...”

• Collusion – whilst group work and discussions with other students is perfectly acceptable, you must write up your own notes. It is not acceptable to use your colleagues notes and submit them as your own.

• Outsourcing – purchasing or downloading a piece of work from the Internet and submitting it as your own.

• Overquoting - if you over quote you may produce a piece of work where the majority of words are not your own, even if you have acknowledged the original sources. You may not think you have committed plagiarism but there will be a question about academic integrity.

• Self-plagiarising – using work you’ve already submitted for another assignment, or articles you’ve previously published.

What can I do to avoid plagiarism?

• When communicating information you need to let people know where you found quotations, ideas or arguments

• Practice good note taking (highlighting / colour coding)

• Always reference and acknowledge all sources you use

• Create a bibliography/reference list• Consult a number of publications• Use bibliographic reference software to store your

referencesSTART EARLY – don’t leave work to the last moment

What can I do to avoid plagiarism?

Benefits of referencing

•You present your own work and receive credit for it•Shows the level you are (to a lecturer etc.)•Interesting for others to find source (perhaps for their work)

What do I have to reference?

•Quotations•Information found on the web•Newspaper articles•Images

Important to learn how to take notes properly

•Learn referencing (Vancouver + Harvard (author, date) System for citing references).•Learn to paraphrase (how to put researched ideas in your own words). This is an alternative to quoting, but no quotation marks are needed. However in written work you still need to acknowledge the ideas “Smith (2007) suggests that …” followed by your paraphrase

How is plagiarism detected?

• Academics reviewing work• Recognising literature referenced

• Change of writing style

• References to research not of your academic level

• Similar work to a friend or colleague

• Use of TurnitinUK software

How does Turnitin work?

It compares a piece of work with five different sources:-

Internet

Proquest databases

Essays from paper mills (cheat sites with papers for sale)

Previously submitted student papers from here and other institutions

Copyright free material (e.g.) GOOGLE books or Project Gutenberg.

Information Literacy Tutorial Books 6 and 9

Source of guidance

Famous cases

Martin Luther King George Harrison

Coldplay

Joe Biden

Johnny Cash

Alex Haley

John Kennedy

James Cameron

Famous cases• According to a Boston University investigation into academic misconduct, Martin Luther King

plagiarized approximately one third of his doctoral thesis. He also appropriated others' text, without credit, for his famous speeches, including "I Have A Dream".

• George Harrison was successfully sued for plagiarizing (though perhaps unconsciously) the Chiffons' "He's So Fine" for the melody of his own "My Sweet Lord". George later wrote a bitter-lyric song on the subject. Ironically, he also "plagiarized" himself at least once, as the introductory chord for The Beatles' I'm Looking Through You is nearly identical to the introductory chord from End of the Line by his later group, the Traveling Wilburys.

• Senator Joseph Biden was forced to withdraw from the 1988 Democratic Presidential nominations when it was revealed that he had failed a course in law school due to plagiarism. It was also shown that he had copied several campaign speeches, notably those of British Labour leader Neil Kinnock and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. In both cases he was essentially exonerated.

• Alex Haley was permitted to settle out-of-court for $650,000, having admitted that he copied large passages of his novel Roots from The African by Harold Courlander.

• Science fiction author Harlan Ellison sued and won in a case against James Cameron, claiming that his film The Terminator plagiarized his episodes "Soldier" and "Demon With a Glass Hand" of the show "The Outer Limits"

Further reading1. A case of academic plagiarism by Ned Kock – a tale of how he pursued

and gained an apology from a professor for plagiarising his work – available full text from ACM Digital Library:

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/310000/306594/p96-kock.pdf?key1=306594&key2=3648696821&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=108526761&CFT

OKEN=35464269

2. Cite them right the essential guide to referencing and plagiarism by Richard Pears and Graham Shields – in the Library at 378.18 PEA

(Books on study skills will also cover writing skills and referencing)

3. The Art of avoiding plagiarism: how to be student. Article in The Guardian by Harriet Swain, published 7th October 2008. A neat summary of tips.http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/07/students.highereducation

4. Online Writing Lab (OWL) Plagiarism Advice sectionhttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/1/

5. www.plagiarism.org

Further Help

Information Literacy TutorialTutorials 6 & 9

http://barrington.cranfield.ac.uk/ilit

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