Plagiarism and referencing

Tips for avoiding plagiarism

• Plagiarism is the theft or use of someone else's work without proper acknowledgement, presenting the material as if it were one's own. Plagiarism is a serious academic offence and the consequences are severe. It is therefore important to understand that any thesis or dissertation submitted for assessment must be your own work.
• Unacknowledged direct copying from the work of another person, or the close paraphrasing of somebody else's work, is plagiarism and is a serious offence, and will be investigated for academic malpractice. This applies to copying both from other students' work or the work of staff, as well as from published sources such as books, reports or journal articles. Plagiarised material may originate from any source. It is as serious to use material from the internet, or from a computer based encyclopaedia or literature archive, as it is to use material from a printed source if it is not properly acknowledged.
• Use of data from the work of others is entirely acceptable as are quotations, and can be valuable, provided that the source of the data or quotation is given. Failure to provide a source or put quotation marks around material that is taken from elsewhere gives the appearance that the comments are ostensibly your own. When quoting word-for-word from the work of another person, quotation marks or indenting (setting the quotation in from the margin) must be used and the source of the quoted material must be acknowledged.
• Paraphrasing, when the original statement is still identifiable and has no acknowledgement, is plagiarism. Taking any piece of text, from whatever source, and substituting words or phrases with other words or phrases, is plagiarism. Any paraphrase of another person's work must have an acknowledgement to the source. It is not acceptable to put together unacknowledged passages from the same or from different sources, linking them together with a few words or sentences of your own and changing a few words from the original text. This is regarded as over-dependence on other sources, which is a form of plagiarism.
• Direct quotations from an earlier piece of your own work, if unattributed, suggest that the work is original when in fact it is not. The direct copying of your own writings qualifies as plagiarism if the fact that the work has been or will be presented elsewhere (for example, an MSc or MPhil Thesis that has been submitted for examination at this or any other University) is not acknowledged.
• Special circumstances apply when submitting a thesis in alternative thesis format. If granted permission material may include those which are solely and/or partly authored by you and may be already published, accepted for publication or submitted for publication, or submitted for publication in externally refereed contexts such as journals and conference proceedings. You should use the introductory section of your thesis to explain and justify in full the nature and extent of your contribution and the contribution of co-authors and other collaborators to the publications presented. A significant proportion of the researched materials should be derived from original research undertaken after the date you initially registered with this University.
• Sources of quotations used should be listed in full in bibliography/references at the end of the piece of work and in a style required by the Faculty guidelines.
• Plagiarism is a serious offence and will always result in imposition of a penalty. In deciding upon the penalty the University will take into account factors such as the extent and proportion of the work that has been plagiarised and your apparent intent. The penalties that can be imposed range from the down-grading of degree class, the award of a lesser qualification (e.g. a diploma rather than a Master’s degree) to disciplinary measures such as academic malpractice.