What is Plagiarism?
December 27th, 2009
- The ‘P’ word has to be one of the scariest a student encounters. The penalties for committing plagiarism are severe. If you are studying on a student visa they can even lead to you being required to leave the country.
- Here is a list of things you must avoid in order to ensure your work is plagiarism free:-
- quoting directly another person’s language, data or illustrations without clear indication that the authorship is not your own and due acknowledgement of the source;
- paraphrasing the critical work of others without due acknowledgement – even if you change some words or the order of the words, this is still plagiarism if you are using someone else’s original ideas and are not properly acknowledging it;
- using ideas taken from someone else without reference to the originator;
- cutting and pasting from the Internet to make a ‘pastiche’ of online sources;
- colluding with another person, including another candidate (other than as might be permitted for joint project work);
- submitting as part of your own report or dissertation someone else’s work without identifying clearly who did the work (for example, where research has been contributed by others to a joint project).
A reputable proofreader or editor will be able to offer you a free anti-plagiarism report using one of the leading software programmes.
