What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the use of ideas, works or words of another person and presenting them as if they were your own. Plagiarised ideas can come from any source including articles, books, online sources, television programmes, lectures or any other information source. Writing with integrity is the best way to avoid plagiarism. This requires you to reference the ideas of others, and properly quote and reference the words of others. See the links at the bottom of this page for further advice on referencing.

Plagiarism often occurs accidentally when students don't reference properly. However, it can also be done purposefully if you are presenting someone else's work as your own. This doesn't mean you should not use the ideas of others! Using the ideas and work of others is how you provide academic evidence for your thinking. To avoid plagiarism, however, you need to reference these ideas correctly. 

Remember: Plagiarism is easy to avoid! All you need to do is ensure you are referencing sources correctly. This does not just involve the use of in-text citations or footnotes but also requires the use of appropriate punctuation to indicate when you are quoting the work of others. 

Plagiarism is a serious issue for academic integrity. If you do not reference a source properly, such as paraphrasing it without acknowledging it, or not mentioning it at all, then the true origin of the material is hidden from the marker. This is counter to academic approaches to writing, where evidence should be clearly referenced and tracible back to the original source. 

Plagiarism may take the form of direct copying, reproducing or paraphrasing ideas, sentences, drawings, graphs, internet sites or any other source and submitting them for assessment without appropriate acknowledgement. Plagiarism can also include copying another student’s work without their knowledge or submitting work that has already been published in another language. The latter relates to the copying of translated material, copying and re-arranging material, or taking the ideas and findings of the material without attribution.

If you have a print impairment you may need books in an accessible format, usually electronic. You may find the Library’s extensive collection of eBooks useful. If eBooks are still not accessible to you, you may be eligible to use the Alternative Formats service.

For more information, click here for the Sensus Access -Alternative formats service. Or for converting your documents, see Sensus Access - Convert your documents.

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