Plagiarism and Referencing

Plagiarism is passing off someone else’s work, written or otherwise, as your own work. This includes published work in the public domain, or the work of other students from any institution. Copying someone else’s work, or quoting, paraphrasing and summarising other people’s work without referencing it, are deemed plagiarism. Plagiarism constitutes serious academic misconduct, which is in breach of academic integrity. Click the icon for TEDI-London’s examples of plagiarism. All universities and higher education establishments take this extremely seriously, including TEDI-London. To avoid plagiarism, appropriate referencing and citation must be employed throughout your writing and presentations. This following information will help teach you how to identify and avoid plagiarism!

Introduction to Plagiarism and Referencing

Another way to think of plagiarism is it is using and presenting work or ideas that are not your own, as your own, either with or without the author’s consent, by incorporating it into your own work without full acknowledgement. Incorporation of the work maybe in its entirety or in part. Whether the intent is to cheat or not, the following acts are considered plagiarism:

• Copying ideas, language, tables, data from published or unpublished work
• Copying part or all of another students work
• Using other people’s work to completely structure your work, present data or create an argument

Plagiarism

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The JISC advisory service (Plagiarism Detection and Prevention 2001) created a list of reasons students plagiarise, including both plagiarising external sources (journals; web) and peer-plagiarism (collusion with other students). Click on the numbers to see the top 10 reasons underpinning plagiarism.

Plagiarism: why?

There are many types of plagiarism which we will explore further. However before doing so, it is worth considering something known as Common Knowledge which is defined as: A principle taken for granted by people knowledgeable about the topic. For example, Newton’s Laws of Motion or certain material properties, etc. However, if you are in doubt about what is and what is not 'common knowledge’, then cite!

Types of Plagiarism

If you directly copy and paste, word for word a paragraph or sections of work that is not your own and if you do not use quotation marks, and do not give credit to the author by way of correctly citing the source - this is direct plagiarism.

Direct Plagiarism

Essentially, you choose to keep the structure and/or argument of the original work, replacing some words or paraphrasing with the aim of making it your own by tweaking the content ever-so-slightly. This form of plagiarism occurs when you borrow words or phrases from someone’s work for sections of your own work, but do not use quotation marks and the citation. Alternatively, if you simply swap particular words utilising synonyms – you are still partaking in plagiarism if the source is not cited.

Paraphrasing Plagiarism

Not identical, so it’s ok?

If writing essays, or laboratory reports, it is usual to refer other people’s work. But, passing off someone else’s work as your own is a type of cheating, known as plagiarism, and the University considers this to be serious academic misconduct.

“When writing essays, scientific or laboratory reports, etc. it is usual to refer to the work of other people. However, trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own is a form of cheating, known as plagiarism, and is considered to be serious academic misconduct by the University.”

Paraphrasing – but Turnitin says it’s OK!

Not identical, so it’s ok?

No! Some words have been changed so this is no longer a direct quotation, however this paraphrasing is not appropriate behaviour. A reference is still needed. This may also be somewhat of a waste of time as you have not really processed the information.

If writing essays, or laboratory reports, it is usual to refer other people’s work. But, passing off someone else’s work as your own is a type of cheating, known as plagiarism, and the University considers this to be serious academic misconduct.

“When writing essays, scientific or laboratory reports, etc. it is usual to refer to the work of other people. However, trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own is a form of cheating, known as plagiarism, and is considered to be serious academic misconduct by the University.”

Paraphrasing – but Turnitin says it’s OK!

Note that the quotation and the paraphrasing here should be attributed to the original authors using referencing. It was taken from ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT INFORMATION for Dept Handbooks 2019/20, University of Nottingham but is not correctly cited here. You will receive more information on referencing.

If writing essays, or laboratory reports, it is usual to refer other people’s work. But, passing off someone else’s work as your own is a type of cheating, known as plagiarism, and the University considers this to be serious academic misconduct. (UoN, 2019)

“When writing essays, scientific or laboratory reports, etc. it is usual to refer to the work of other people. However, trying to pass off someone else’s work as your own is a form of cheating, known as plagiarism, and is considered to be serious academic misconduct by the University.” (UoN, 2019)

Paraphrasing – but TurnItIn says it’s OK!

Throughout your studies, you may have many classes and subjects where some of the content crosses over. If you submit an assignment for a module in Engineering Design, and then submit the same, or similar, assignment or parts of the same assignment in a separate Smart Cities module, you will have self-plagiarised. NOTE: If there are some pieces of work that you have previously created and would like to include in your new submissions, you must cite your previous work accordingly.

Self-Plagiarism

As you may have guessed – accidental plagiarism occurs when you are rushing and not taking care with your submissions. You may forget to cite your sources or use quotation marks, or perhaps you paraphrased without giving credit to the author. This can all be avoided by slowing down and taking note of all sources as you write. It is a good idea to use a Referencing Manager (e.g. EndNote; RefWorks; Mendeley; Zotero), which will help you keep track of important references and make it quicker and easier to reference appropriately.

Accidental Plagiarism

One form of plagiarism that we have not yet covered, is inappropriate citation. This is where you attempt to cite and reference, but you have not referenced adequately. This means you end up representing other people’s work as your own. This often happens due to poor time management, when a student is rushing to finish work for a deadline. It can also happen when a student does not fully understand how to reference appropriately. This will be covered in the next section.

Inappropriate Citation

Collusion

Select one of the following answers:

You start at TEDI-London having already completed a year at another University. You have to write a report on a topic that is very similar to an assignment you submitted at your previous University. You make a few changes to the introduction of your old report and submit it again in your current module.

Let’s consider another example! Read the scenario below and then identify what type of plagiarism has taken place:

Plagiarism Question 1

Self Plagiarism

False Authorship

Direct Plagiarism

Since you only made a few changes and resubmitted old work, you have self-plagiarised. If you had taken some findings from your previous work, quoted, paraphrased, or summarised it with an appropriate citation, you could have avoided plagiarising.

The correct answer is Self Plagiarism

Plagiarism Question – Solution

CORRECT!