What is Plagiarism, and how to avoid it?

• In some circumstances students may be expected to copy
• Teachers may want students to repeat exactly what is in text books or lecture notes.

At the University of Southampton all work you submit for marking must be your own original creation
Plagiarism is using someone else’s work without indicating that it is not your own… withoutcrediting the original author

The University has produced an official definition and examples which are available from http://www.calendar.soton.ac.uk/sectionIV/academic-integrity-statement.html

Plagiarism is the reproduction or paraphrasing, without acknowledgement, from public or private (ie: unpublished) material (including material downloaded from the Internet) attributable to, or which is the intellectual property of, another including the work of students. Plagiarism may be of written and also non-written form and therefore would also include the unacknowledged use of computer programs, mathematical/computer models/algorithms, computer software in all forms, macros, spreadsheets, web pages, databases, mathematical derivations and calculations, designs/models/displays of any sort, diagrams, charts, graphs, tables, drawings, works of art of any sort, fine art pieces or artefacts, digital images, computer aided design drawings, GIS files, photographs, maps, music/composition of any sort, posters, presentations, and tracing*. *(this is not an exhaustive list)

Examples of plagiarism are:

• Including in your own work extracts from another person’s work without the use of quotation marks and crediting the source;
• The use of ideas of another person without acknowledgement of the source;
• Paraphrasing or summarising another person’s work without acknowledgement;
• Cutting and pasting from electronic sources without explicit acknowledgement of the source or the URL or author, and/or without explicitly marking the pasted text as a quotation;
• Submitting a piece of work entirely as your own when it was produced in collaboration with others, and not declaring that this collaboration has taken place (this is known as ‘collusion’).
• Submitting appropriated imagery or creative products without indicating the source of the work

How to Avoid Plagiarism

Always acknowledge your sources, this applies to all types of work you complete:

In formal writing we have a convention of using citations (formal acknowledgement of original sources used within written material) which are related to a list of references which appear at the end of the document. Be aware that many different formats exist (for example ACM, LNCS, and Harvard). Whichever format you are asked to use you must use it accurately and consistently.

1.Quote any material copied from elsewhere

• it may be appropriate to paraphrase rather than copy and quote, as discussed below

2.Follow the quotation (or paraphrased material) with a citation such as [3] which clearly identifies an item in your bibliography

3.Put the bibliography at the end of your report

• this must give bibliographic details such as title, author, and year for each source you have cited

4.You must do this for all sources