Plagiarism and how to avoid it – a good practice guide for

students

Although we realise that most students are well aware of the

need to avoid plagiarism, we ask that you take a few minutes
to read this short guide. Thank you.

What’s it all about?

The information in this guide for students has been put together to
provide help and advice to all students to help them to avoid
plagiarism in their assessed work. “Assessed work” includes all
essays, projects, assignments, art work, dissertation, thesis or any
other work that a student is required to present to meet the
assessment requirements of his or her programme at Glyndŵr.

Glyndŵr like many other HEIs in the UK recognises that incidents

of plagiarism are increasing and it wishes to help all students to
ensure that they are not involved in any form of plagiarism, as all
cases of plagiarism that are proven have serious consequences
for students and their academic achievements at Glyndŵr.
Glyndŵr recognises that the majority of students are well aware of
the need to avoid plagiarism and to take care that they
acknowledge and reference correctly all the sources that they use

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in their work. However, all students should take a few moments to
read this guide to make absolutely certain that they are fully aware
of what plagiarism is and how they can make sure that all of their
work is free from any suspicion of plagiarism.

Glyndŵr acknowledges the generosity of a range of Universities

and Colleges in providing Glyndŵr with their guides on plagiarism
as examples of such guides. Glyndŵr has also drawn upon
Guidelines nos. 78 and 87 which are attached to this guide, to
prepare this guide for students. These guidelines are also
available in the library and on the Glyndŵr web.

PLEASE NOTE THAT PLAGIARISM IS A SERIOUS ACADEMIC

OFFENCE AND SHOULD BE AVOIDED BY ALL STUDENTS.

What is plagiarism?

Pyper (2000) defines plagiarism as: “.. simply theft. It is taking the
words, ideas and labour of other people and giving the impression
that they are your own...”

To expand, plagiarism is the representation as your own work,

the work of another person or organisation. This can include
lecture notes, handouts, presentations, and also applies to any
other material created by another student, past or present, or by
any other person, including authors of books, journals or web
pages.

You are plagiarising if you:

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 • copy verbatim the work of another without proper
acknowledgement

• closely paraphrase the work of another by simply changing a

few words or altering the order of presentation, without
acknowledgement

• quote phrases from another’s work without proper

acknowledgement

• deliberately or inadvertently present another's concept as

your own.

Unfair practice and plagiarism

Plagiarism is one of the ways that a student may either

inadvertently or deliberately has used “unfair practice” to complete
any element of his/her assessed work.

Why does it matter if I plagiarise?

In most systems of higher education in the world, it is agreed that

students must present their own work, and where they draw upon
the work of others, they must reference that work correctly and not
attempt in any way to present another person’s work as their own.

Depending on the country involved, to plagiarise is regarded as a

serious academic offence that attracts a serious penalty when it is
detected.

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So what’s the fuss all about?

Think about the cases below1 and their implications. We hope you
will understand why higher education institutions in the UK are
clear that plagiarism is not permissible under any circumstances:

• A medical researcher falsifies the results of his new anti-

cancer drug to make his discovery seem more important and
able to save lives

• A young writer submits his ideas to a film company which

refuses to consider them. Later on a film is produced that is
based on his writing. The film company refuses to
acknowledge his work

• A historian publishes a book claiming that there was never

any genocide in Rwanda. He states that he has a lot of
evidence for this and provides anonymous quotations, but
does not give any sources for this claims

• A number of students on a particular programme at a

University are acquiring their essays from an Internet site for
£50 each. The university has not detected this. This has led
to a decline in the University’s reputation for that programme
with employers as its graduates appear not to have
appropriate skills to enable them to work after graduation

• A design student loses the portfolio containing all the

sketches for her final year project - many weeks and months

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 of work. She is devastated but works night and day to
recover her work. On the day of the show she finds out that
many of her original ideas have been used in another
student’s work and have been awarded higher marks than
1
the work she produced

We hope you will agree that all of the above situations have
immediately serious consequences. They all affect people’s lives
and distort perceptions of the truth. In the long term, such
dishonesty undermines everyone and stifles creativity and the
creation of new ideas.

What are the possible penalties if plagiarism is proven in a

student’s work?

We hope that students will avoid any suspicion of plagiarism in

their assessed work by using this guide carefully and by asking for
help if they are unsure.

However, if a case of plagiarism, no matter how small, is found, a

student’s case must be considered either by an Assessment Board
(which confirms a student’s marks) or by a specially convened
Committee of Enquiry.

Both are formal processes and follow the “Unfair Practice

Procedures” which are included in Glyndŵr’s Academic
Regulations and apply to all study at Glyndŵr. The possible
penalties that an Assessment Board or a Committee of Enquiry

1
Thanks are due to the University of Brighton for providing these examples in their guide for students

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can decide to apply to a student’s case are set out in the
Procedure and include:

• Verbal or written reprimand. NB. This is kept on file and

discussed with the student to ensure that any repeat
offence cannot then be classed as ‘inadvertent’. A
second or subsequent offence will be treated more
harshly

• Cancellation of the student’s mark for all or part of the

module affected

• Cancellation of the student’s mark for all or part of the

module affected and postponement of his or her study at
Glyndŵr

• Cancellation of the student’s mark for all modules for the

particular level of study

• Termination of his or her study at Glyndŵr

Professional programmes

Students on Professional Programmes should also note that many

Professional Bodies regard plagiarism as a very serious matter.
Many define it as “theft” with all the very serious consequences
that apply when a professional person is regarded as dishonest,
including the removal or refusal to register a dishonest person as a

on plagiarism and how to avoid it.

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person who is recognised as being able to work as a professional.
A proven case of plagiarism could therefore prevent a student
obtaining a job in his her chosen profession such as teaching,
nursing, social work or youth and community work.

To summarise, plagiarism is a very serious matter and

students must take steps to avoid it at all times, and if in
doubt ASK before handing in your assessed work for
marking!!

How will I know if I have plagiarised or not?

In many cases, plagiarism is committed simply because the

student does not know how to reference properly. A typical piece
of research quite properly involves taking different views on a topic
from recognised authors and measuring them against each other.
The result of this exercise is to produce a synthesis, and from that
work - another view (that of the student) which draws upon the
views or ideas expressed by the other persons is written up in the
assessed work.

As long as you clearly identify these previous views and ideas as

belonging to other authors whenever they are used in your
work, no plagiarism is committed. The recommended way to
identify such views and ideas is by using the Harvard Referencing
Method (see guideline no. 78) 2 . You should learn how to use
Harvard and use it consistently.

2
Students should note that while Glyndŵr’s Academic Board has asked that all students have
an understanding of the Harvard referencing system students should note that in their own

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A dissertation, thesis, essay, project or any other work submitted
by you for formal assessment during the course of your study must
be produced by you alone and in your own words, except for
quotations from published and unpublished sources which shall be
clearly indicated and acknowledged. You must acknowledge all
sources, including thoughts, words, drawings, designs,
illustrations, photographs, maps, statistical data, graphs, computer
programs, information from the Internet, or any other work. Failure
to reference the use of any of these sources constitutes
plagiarism.

What should the balance be between use of my own words

and using quotations or references from other people?

Making a decision about the balance between using your own

words and acknowledging in the text where you are drawing upon
ideas or work of other people is part of your examination technique
and needs to be judged by you, and discussed with your module,
programme leader or tutor if you are unsure and need advice.
Also reading published work in books or journals will give you
some ideas about the balance between using quotations and your
own words.

As a general guide it is much better to use your own words to

show that you have read and understood the work of another

subject discipline different referencing systems may apply. Staff will advise students if this is
the case. However, if you are in any doubt PLEASE ASK a member of staff.

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person and to acknowledge them in your text, than it is to use
large quotations from other people.

Ask yourself the question - what am I being assessed on? The

answer is that you are being assessed on the extent to which you
have understood the topic which you have studied and the way in
which you are able to communicate that understanding clearly to
another person and to present your own ideas and analysis of the
topic you have studied. You are not therefore likely to gain good
marks for using cut and paste from other people’s documents
(whether or not you reference or acknowledge the authors).

How to avoid plagiarism

• When taking notes from any source, remember to write down

all the bibliographic details at the time (e.g. author and / or
editor, date, page number(s), journal title, article title, book
and chapter title, publisher and place of publication). This
means you can reference it properly later on.

• When making notes, separate your ideas from the ideas of

others, for example use a different coloured pen to note what
others have said, so you do not inadvertently use it without
referencing it in your final work.

• Don’t be afraid to use your own words. You are not expected
to write as professionally as the authors of the books and
journals you have read. Be confident enough to write your
own ideas in your own words. A good tip is to close the book
or journal you are using and then write your own summary.

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 • Try not to write your own assignment based solely on your
notes from books and journals. Think of your own views and
ideas, and use references from others to back them up or
counterpoise an argument.

• Plan your assignments in good time, so you are not tempted

to make shortcuts.

How can I find out more?

There are many sources of advice and guidance on plagiarism and

how to avoid it. If in any doubt ASK.

Sources available to students include:

• Glyndŵr guidelines 78 and 87 (attached to this Guide).

Guidelines are also available in the library and on the
Glyndŵr web page
(www.glyndwr.ac.uk.guidelines/guidelines.htm)

• “Avoiding Plagiarism - advice for students”- by Dr Hugh S

Pyper available on the JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service at
http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/faculties/art/information
_studies/lmri/JISCPAS/docs/external/student_plagiarism_ad
vice.doc (copy attached to this Guide)

• Your Student Programme Handbook

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 • Sessions offered on preparing essays, assignments, projects
or dissertations offered by your Programme at Glyndŵr -
PLEASE ATTEND THESE!

78. Referencing using the Harvard

method
When you write an essay, project, assignment, dissertation or thesis for a
research degree, you will frequently need to refer to literature that you have
read in order to support an argument, illustrate a point, outline a particular
theory, report information or data, or support your reasoning. You must
acknowledge the source of all works that you refer to, by citing references.
References should be flagged within your text and full details listed at the end
of the document. It is important that you never present another writer’s
material or ideas without acknowledging the source by citing a reference. To
do this is plagiarism, for which you will be subject to the Institute’s Unfair
Practice Procedure if detected. References are essential for the following
reasons:

• to prove that you have researched your topic, and that your ideas have
been presented in the light of published material;
• to substantiate your ideas and arguments;
• to acknowledge the source of your information and development of your ideas;
• to distinguish between your own opinions and those of others;
• to enable your readers to locate the source of your ideas in order to study the
material themselves.

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Principal aspects of the method

The Harvard, or “Name and Date”, method of referencing is one of the most
commonly used. There are two aspects to the system. Firstly, a ‘flag’ is
entered, in brackets, in the body of your text at the point at which you make
use of another writer’s work. Secondly, a list, entitled “References”, is
provided at the end of your work in which fuller details of all the references you
have flagged in your text are presented alphabetically. The purpose of this
method is to ensure that the main body of your text is not cluttered up with
large amounts of bibliographic information, which the reader might find
intrusive. The flags themselves contain the minimum amount of information
possible – just sufficient to locate the reference in your list.

Please note
Students should note that while Glyndŵr’s Academic Board has asked all students have
an understanding of the Harvard referencing system students should note that in their
own subject discipline different referencing systems may apply. Staff will advise
students if this is the case. However, if you in doubt PLEASE ASK a member of staff.

Flagging references in your text

The flag is usually presented in the following form: a set of brackets containing
the surname of the author to whom you are referring followed by the year of
publication of the source document. For example:

The original conclusions (Williams, 1990) have now been questioned

(Reynolds, 1994).

If the author’s name appears naturally in the text, add only the date in
brackets. For example:

The original conclusions have now been questioned by both Reynolds (1994)
and Roberts (1995).

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Where there are 2 authors, both should appear in brackets. For example:

A more recent study (Williams and Reynolds, 1996) disproved the earlier
findings.

If there are 3 or more authors, only the first should appear, followed by the
term “et al.” (A shortened form of “et alia”, the Latin for “and others”). For
example:

In a recent report, Smith et al. (1996) have* suggested yet another solution.

(* note the use of the plural for ‘Smith et al.’)

When an author has published more than one work in the same year, the
works should be identified with lower case letters (a, b, c, etc. – in the order
used) after the date. For example:

Further studies (Smith, 1995a) agreed with the initial findings (Smith, 1995b).

Citing references at the end of your document

Your list of references appears alphabetically by author at the end of your

document. The information provided for each (known as “a bibliographic
citation”) must comply with a strict set of requirements that would enable any
of your readers precisely to locate the source items to which you refer. The
format of the citation varies slightly according to the type of material it relates
to. You should note that the punctuation used and the emphasis given to
sections of the typeface is of great importance. For instance, the use of italics
or bold or underlined text where specified, is essential because it
conventionally serves to identify the type of source material (e.g. book or
journal). The bibliographic information, which must be cited for different types
of reference source, is described below. One point to note is that bibliographic

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citations include the names of all authors of a source, no matter how many;
the term ‘et al.’ is not used

Books:
• each author’s name and initials
• the year of publication in brackets
• the title of the book in italics, or bold text or underlined text
• the edition, if more than the first
• the exact page number(s) at which the reference is located within the source text
• the place of publication
• the publisher’s name

For example:

Carnall, C.A. (1999) Managing change in organizations (3rd edn.), p38.

London, Prentice Hall.

Rudestam, K.E. and Newton, R.R. (1992) Surviving your dissertation: a

comprehensive guide to content and process, pp120-125. London, Sage
publications.

For more than one reference taken from the same source, the full
bibliographic details are cited only once but the different page numbers are
entered alongside the appropriate lower case letter used in the flags in your
main text. For example:

Phillips, M. (1995) The search for truth. London, Sage publications.

(a) p37
(b) p44

NB. Page numbers can also be given in the body of the text. Please check
with your tutor for advice.

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For different works in the same year by one author, the lower case letters used in the
flags are included

Carson, P. (1990) Gender issues today, p55. London, Macmillan Press.

Carson, P. (1995) The world of work, pp17-18. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
Dawson, R. (1999a) The politics of the family, p171. London, Hugo
Publications.
Dawson, R. (1999b) Working women, p90. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

For edited books, cite under the editor’s or editors’ names and include the
term (ed. or eds.) For example:

Morgan, D. and Stanley, L. (eds.) (1993) Debates in sociology. Manchester,

Manchester University Press.

If you are directly quoting an author who has contributed to an edited book,
cite the name of the chapter (in single inverted commas) written by that author,
then, following the word ‘in’ cite the bibliographic details of the source book.
For example:

Roberts, H. (1993) ‘The women and class debate’ in Morgan, D. and Stanley,
L. (eds.) Debates in sociology, p55. Manchester, Manchester University
Press.

Journals:
• each author’s name and initials
• the year of publication in brackets
• the title of article in single inverted commas
• the title of journal, in italics, or bold or underlined text
• the volume number and part number or month of issue where appropriate
• the number of the first and last pages of the article

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For example:
Weiner, B. (1985) ‘An attributional theory of achievement, motivation and
emotion’. Psychological review, vol. 92, 548-73.

(NOTE the distinguishing difference between the format of citations for books
and for journals. With the former, it is the name of the book that appears in
italics, bold or underlined text; with journals, it is the title of the journal. Note
also, that you should use a consistent style in your choice of either italics, bold
or underlined text.)

Audio-visual material:
For audiovisual materials, include the author or director, title, format, date and
publisher. For example:

Robinson, P. (Director) (1982) Making your case [videocassette]. London,

Video Arts Ltd.

British Standards:
The citation should include the following details:
• the words “British Standards Institution”
• the date of publication in brackets
• British Standard number and year (separated by a colon)
• the title and subtitle (if any) in italics, bold or underlined text
• the place of publication (if known)
• the name of publisher using the abbreviation “BSI”

For example:

British Standards Institution (1990) BS 5605:1990 Recommendations for

citing and referencing published material. Milton Keynes, BSI.

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Conference papers:
As a general rule, list as much information as possible, including dates and the
body responsible for publication. For example:

Kregel, J.A., et al. (1989) Factors in business investment [paper presented

to a conference held at the Science Centre, Berlin, September 1987]. Berlin,
the Science Centre.

Corporate authors:
Works of corporate authorship are works produced by national bodies,
groups, government departments, committees, etc. Such publications are
often casually referred to by the name of the chairperson, but this name
should not be used as the author. However, you can give the name of the
chairperson in brackets after the title. For example:

Great Britain, Department of Health and Social Security (1980) Report of the
working party on inequalities in health [Chairperson: Sir Douglas Black].
London, HMSO.

Exhibition catalogues, etc.:

Where there is no author, use the Gallery or Museum. For example:

Sunderland Art Centre (1978) Craftsmanlike [exhibition catalogue].

Sunderland, Ceolfirth Press.

Government publications:
These are usually of corporate authorship, and should be listed according to
the department responsible for publication. However, the citation should
always commence with the words “Great Britain”. For example:

Great Britain, Home Office (1990) The Hillsborough Stadium, 15 April 1989
: inquiry by Lord Chief Justice Taylor: final report. London, HMSO.

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Internet sources:
There is not yet a standard related to referencing Internet sources. As a
general rule, it is unwise to use Internet references unless they are from
reputable sources, which could also be reliably located by means other than
the Internet. Remember that one of the purposes of referencing is to enable
others to locate the original source of your ideas. As we all know, many
Internet sources are ephemeral (“here today, gone tomorrow”). Also, it is often
far from clear who the publisher is for many Internet sites.

We should not be beguiled into thinking that a web-site address has any
permanence or even any authenticity. After all, where would you physically
find “www.magic-solutions-for-business.com”? A so-called “web-site
address” is not really an address at all. What we need to know from a
reference is who actually publishes the site and where to find them for
purposes of verification, etc.; this is a long way from knowing merely a web-
site address.

With these points in mind, it may be better not to use such a source unless
you know who actually produces it. If you do know who produces (i.e.
publishes) it, then you should include this information as part of the
bibliographic citation. But, don’t use ephemeral or trivial Internet sources.

However, for credible Internet sources follow the general rules for Harvard
referencing by citing the author(s), the date, the title, a web-site address, AND
enough information to locate the publisher of the site so that you might be
able to obtain hard copy. A note of the date you accessed the site may also
be useful. For example:

Dover, R. (1996) Blake’s poetry. http://io.glyndwr.ac.uk/rdover/blake/poetry.

Internet source produced by Dover, R., at North East Wales Institute of Higher
Education, UK. [Electronically accessed 21st May 2002.]

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Research reports:
If possible it is important to include the subtitle and series information

• author’s name

• date of publication in brackets

• title and subtitle (if any) in italics, bold or underlined text

• research report number

• place of publication (if known)

• publisher
For example:

BRECSU, Building Research Establishment (1996) Drawing a winner:

energy efficient design of sports centres. Good practice guide no. 211.
London, Department of the Environment.

Theses and dissertations:

• author’s name
• year of publication in brackets
• title and subtitle (if any) in italics, bold or underlined text
• type of document, e.g. Ph.D. thesis, degree dissertation
• place of publication if not clear from the institution name (e.g. Bristol,
University of the West of England)
• awarding institution

For example:

Ferguson, M.W. (1998) Photophysical and photochemical properties of

photosensitisers for the photodynamic therapy of tumours. Ph.D. thesis,
North East Wales Institute of Higher Education.

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Unpublished material:
You may refer to items which you found useful, but which are not officially
published, for example pamphlets, internal working papers. They should be
referenced in the same way. For example:

Jones, A. (1996) Guidelines for writing. Unpublished report. Liverpool,

Smith Institute.

You may even wish to reference a useful interview or conversation you have
conducted. For example:

Roberts, A. (1996). Personal communication.

Second-hand references:
Whenever possible, you should quote from original sources. If this is not
possible, use the term “cited by...” followed by the reference for the work in
which it is quoted.

For example:

Newby, M. (1989) Writing: a guide for students. Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press. Cited by Smith, A. (1992) Students’ writing skills. London,
Kogan Page.

Direct quotations:
If your quotation is less than 2 lines long, you should include it in your text in
inverted commas. For example:

Many academics have pointed to the need to develop students’ writing skills.
It has been argued that “writing is like talking: a natural ability - once you have
learned how to do it” (Newby, 1989). However, the debate seems never
ending . . .

Remember then to add Newby to the list of references.

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If your quotation is longer than 2 lines, indent the whole quotation as a new
paragraph; reduce the point size of the text and close the line spacing to single
line spacing (if you have been using a more open spacing for your main text).
You do not need to use inverted commas. Add the page number(s) where the
quote is taken from, and use 3 full stops to indicate any word(s) you have
missed out. For example:

Many academics have pointed to the need to develop writing skills in

students. Newby (1989) asserts:

Writing is like talking: a natural ability - once you have learned to do it. It
develops with use in the right environment. You can learn how to write
better ... don’t give up hope: the chances are that you can still improve
considerably (p 5).

Personal additions:
Sometimes you may wish to append personal notes to a citation or to a bibliographic
entry in your reference list. This is often best done by using square brackets, e.g.
for conference papers [paper presented to a conference held at the Science Centre,
Berlin, September 1987.]

Compiling a bibliography
A bibliography is different from a list of references. It is a list of various
sources – in addition to those you have cited in your list of references – which
you have used during the process of studying for, and writing, your
assignment. The purpose of including a bibliography is to assist others who
may wish to study a similar topic. It therefore does not require page numbers
since you are generally referring to whole works for background reading
purposes rather than isolated quotes or ideas.

However, a bibliography is sometimes considered as an “optional extra”. You

should take advice on whether or not to add a bibliography at the end of
your work. If you decide to do so, remember that it is more useful to list
unusual or unlikely sources rather than the obvious ones. Listing well-known
textbooks or newspapers, and so on, might be considered rather pointless

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and a distraction from the main aim of pointing the reader towards material
they might not have otherwise considered. For the same reason, don’t bother
repeating citations of works already appearing in your list of references.

A bibliography should be arranged alphabetically by the author’s surname and

by date within that if there is more than one work by the same author. Follow
the same bibliographic rules as for your reference list.

Good practice in the use of references and quotations

There are a number of simple principles concerning best use of references

and quotations in academic writing. The more important ones are as follows:

a) the effective use of a reference usually involves a bit more than simply
citing the source!

The following, for instance, is not very helpful in supporting an argument you
are making:

The studies carried out by Robinson (1998) have provided some interesting
new ideas about change in organizations.

A better use of the reference would involve briefly describing Robinson’s

studies, and saying something about his ‘new ideas’, e.g.:

Robinson (1998), in his studies of business strategy in small engineering

firms, found that both ‘technology push’ and ‘consumer pull’ were important
drivers of organizational change.

In the first example you are giving the reader no actual evidence that
Robinson’s studies support your argument. The reference is thus of virtually
no use to anyone; we are left to guess what his work was about.

Good practice, therefore, involves saying something about each reference t

that you use so that the reader can judge its relevance to your argument.

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b) Always make it clear which precise part of your discussion is attributable to
ideas from other sources. The practice of tagging a reference on at the
end of various paragraphs in your assignment is not usually adequate. It
leaves the reader unclear about exactly which ideas are yours and which
come from elsewhere. You should try, wherever possible, to cite the
reference at the start or in the middle of the material actually referred to.
For instance:

Wilson (1991) argued that . . .

Or,

More recent studies of personality traits in social workers (Goodyear, 2001)

have shown that

c) The use of direct quotations in work which you are submitting for
assessment should be fairly limited. It only really makes sense to use a
quotation where the words or the phraseology of the original writer convey
the meaning in an exceptional or memorable way. Broadly speaking you
should use your own words wherever possible to describe or explain the
work of others

Thus when using verbatim quotations from other sources you should not
normally use excerpts more than three or four lines long. Nor should you use
too many quotations overall. (As a guide, no more than 5% of the total word
count of your work should normally be made up of direct quotations.)

In general, make use of paraphrasing or précis as much as possible. This will best
demonstrate your own understanding of the issues involved. (Remember that you
still need to acknowledge the source of ideas by citing references even when
paraphrasing the work of others. Not to do so would be plagiarism.)

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87. Developing your referencing
skills
What is plagiarism?
To plagiarise has been defined as:

"to appropriate ideas, passages etc. from another work or author" Hanks, P
(ed.) (1991) Collins English dictionary. Glasgow, HarperCollins.
To expand, plagiarism is the representation as your own the work of another
person or organisation. This can include lecture notes, handouts,
presentations, and also applies to the material of another student, past or
present. You are plagiarising if you:

• copy verbatim the work of another without proper acknowledgement

• closely paraphrase the work of another by simply changing a few

words or altering the order of presentation, without acknowledgement

• quote phrases from another’s work without proper acknowledgement

• deliberately present another's concept as your own.

How will I know?

In many cases, plagiarism is committed simply because the student does not
know how to reference properly. A typical piece of research involves taking
different views on a topic from recognised authors and measuring them
against each other. The result of this exercise is to produce a synthesis,

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another view (that of the student) which to some extent comprises ideas
contained in the previous views.
As long as you clearly identify these previous views and ideas as belonging to
other authors whenever they are used in your work, no plagiarism is
committed. The recommended way to identify such views and ideas is by
using the Harvard Referencing Method (see Guideline no. 78). You should
learn how to use Harvard and use it consistently.

A dissertation, thesis, essay, project or any other work submitted by you for
formal assessment during the course of your study must be produced by you
alone and in your own words, except for quotations from published and
unpublished sources which shall be clearly indicated and acknowledged. You
must acknowledge all sources, including thoughts, words, drawings, designs,
illustrations, photographs, maps, statistical data, graphs, computer programs,
information from the Internet, or any other work. Failure to reference the use
of any of these sources constitutes plagiarism.

How do I avoid it?

To avoid plagiarism, remember the following advice:

• Take the time to learn how to reference properly, and stick to one
system (see Guideline no. 78 – Referencing using the Harvard
method).

• When taking notes from any source, remember to write down all the
bibliographic details at the time (author, title, publisher, date, etc). This
means you can reference it properly later on.

• When making notes, separate your ideas from the ideas of others, for
example use a different coloured pen to note what others have said, so
you do not inadvertently use it without referencing in your final work.

• Don’t be afraid to use your own words. You are not expected to write
as professionally as the authors of the books and journals you have
read. Be confident enough to write your own ideas in your own words.

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 • Try not to write your own assignment based solely on your notes from
books and journals. Think of your own views and ideas, and use
references from others to back them up or counterpoise an argument.

• Know the regulations about plagiarism.

What about the Glyndŵr University regulations?

The Institute takes cases of plagiarism very seriously. The penalty applied to
those against whom an allegation has been substantiated depends on the
extent of the plagiarism. There are a range of penalties which include the
cancellation of a candidate's marks for a piece of assessed work in the least
severe case, to the disqualification of the candidate from any future Institute
assessment / examination in the most severe case.

Full details of the unfair practice procedure to be used in the event of

suspected plagiarism can be obtained from the Student Programmes Office.

For further information, please contact the library enquiry

desk, located on the first floor of the library or you can email
[email protected]

AVOIDING PLAGIARISM, ADVICE FOR STUDENTS, DR HUGH S PYPER

Academic Integrity
Every piece of written coursework submitted to the department must be
accompanied by a Declaration of Academic Integrity which you sign, affirming
that the work is your own and does not contain material from unacknowledged
sources. Work submitted without the Declaration will not be marked until the
Declaration is supplied and in the meantime may incur late submission
penalties.

Signing this declaration falsely is regarded as a very serious offence and

students who are found guilty of it are subject to severe penalties. The
university can refuse to award a degree if a student is shown to have made a
false declaration with intent to deceive. It is vital, therefore, that you are clear
what you are committed to when you sign this document. Any breach of that
declaration lays you open to a charge of plagiarism.

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What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is simply theft. It is taking the words, ideas and labour of other
people and giving the impression that they are your own. This applies to even
a single phrase or a sentence, not just to the work as a whole. They may be
taken from authors you have read or from a fellow student. If this is done with
the deliberate intention to deceive your reader, it clearly deserves severe
punishment.

Sadly, however, it is possible for students unwittingly to lay themselves open

to a charge of plagiarism through carelessness or ignorance. The process of
investigating such a charge is time-consuming and unpleasant for everyone
concerned. For everyone’s sake, you should take every care not only to avoid
plagiarism but also to avoid giving your reader any reason to suspect it in your
work

Whatever the intention, it is still wrong for anyone to be given credit for a
piece of work which is not theirs. If it is not clear to the reader what your
original work is and what you have derived from somewhere else, how is a
marker to know what deserves credit? Marks will inevitably be lost, even if
nothing more serious is amiss, because it is your business as the writer to
make the distinction clear for your reader.

How do I avoid a charge of plagiarism?

The first thing to say is ‘If in doubt, ASK!’ Your Personal Tutor, Year Tutor
or Module Tutor can give you advice. However, common sense will help you
avoid most of the problems.

The main thing to do is to provide full and meticulous references to any

material that you draw on in your essay. References should enable the
reader to turn straight to the passage you are referring to or quoting in the
same edition of the book or article that you read. This is why it is important
to include full details of publisher, place of publication and date and any other
information that pinpoints the particular edition. Different editions of the same
book may vary in page numbers, for instance, so your reader will not find the
passage on the page you cite.

By putting in full references you are enabling your reader to check the
quotation and its context to see if you have reproduced and interpreted it
correctly. It also alerts them to other material that might be interesting for
them to read if they wish to follow up the topic for themselves. The
department issues a style guide on referencing and footnotes which gives you
models to follow. Make sure you have a copy and make use of it.

It is not enough just to provide a general reference to a book in a bibliography,

however. You need to be specific about which passages you have used
where in your essay. If references are inaccurate or incomplete or missing,
then, whether you mean to deceive or not, your work by definition contains
material from ‘unacknowledged sources’. For instance, if you fail to provide a

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bibliography, you are either implying that you made the essay up entirely out
of your own head, or else the essay must be based on unacknowledged
sources. A source which cannot be traced because of inadequate
references is in effect ‘unacknowledged’. If you have attached the
department’s declaration of academic integrity to a piece of work with
inadequate references, you are lying.

Failure to provide accurate references must also raise the question as to

whether you have something to hide from your reader. What would they find
if they did go back to the source?

POSSIBLE PITFALLS
There are some particular areas in referencing which can be genuinely
confused. Remember, the basic principle is that you must make it clear to
your reader what is your work and what is someone else’s.

Quotations
Quite simply, if you use sentences, phrases, or even distinctive words from a
source, you must place them in quotation marks and give a reference to the
page from which the words come. If in doubt, follow this rule and you
can’t go wrong, at least in regard to plagiarism (but see below).

NB: If your reader can go back to the source and find word-for-word
correspondence between what you write and what the source writes,
you are not covered from a charge of plagiarism by the fact that you put
a general reference to a book or even to the particular passage. Such
‘hidden’ quotations are not acceptable. They must be marked as
quotations in the text.

Summaries
Often, however, you do not need to or want to quote a long passage from a
book to put across the main point. Indeed, an essay which is just a string of
quotations may be covered from plagiarism in the strictest sense if it is
properly referenced, but it won’t get many marks! Showing you can copy
quotations doesn’t give a reader much indication of what your take on the
subject is, and doesn’t show that you are capable of getting the gist of a
passage and communicating economically its important and relevant points.

It is quite legitimate to summarise what a writer has said. You need to provide
your reader with the information she needs to check whether your summary is
accurate, however. It is also absolutely essential to make it clear where
you are summarising someone else’s work and when you move on to
your own assessment or development of what they have written.

This is a particularly difficult but important area. It is not enough just to use
footnotes and references, though these are essential. You should be
scrupulous in using phrases such as

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 According to Smith, …
Jones argues …
Put in summary form, Black’s thesis is …

and then signal clearly that you are moving on with phrases such as

The conclusion we can draw from this is…

This argument seems flawed in two ways…
Black’s opinion needs to be balanced with that of Green, who claims
that …

In the above examples, there should be a footnote or reference beside each

name, so the reader can check back for the source of your summary.

NB Summaries must be in your own words. Any sentences, phrases or

distinctive words which you take from the source must be put in
quotation marks. This is one of the most common mistakes students make
and the point cannot be repeated often enough. You are not covered from a
suspicion of plagiarism simply by giving a general reference. Nor is it
enough simply to change the odd word here or there while basically copying
what your source says. Picking out sentences and then stringing them
together is also not acceptable. The summary must be in your own words, or
else in quotation marks. A good tip is to close the book as you write up the
summary. If in doubt, quote, but remember that you can’t get any credit for
the contents of a quotation! One of the most important skills which an essay
is assessing is your ability to communicate succinctly the important and
relevant point you have gained from your reading.

You should also remember that what you will get most marks for in an essay is
not your summary, but what you do with it: how you build on or critique the
material you are using. An essay which just consists of summaries of other
people’s work with no evaluation or attempt to come to a conclusion, however
well written or referenced, will not gain high marks. The more you can show
an original approach, the less likely it will be that any suspicion of plagiarism
will arise.

SECOND -LEVEL SOURCES

Experience shows that students find particular problems in dealing with what
could be called ‘second-level’ sources as opposed to ‘first-level’ sources. The
distinction is simple. If you quote directly from an author’s own work, you are
using a first-level source. However, if you quote what someone else says that
the author says, whether by quoting the author or summarising their work, you
are using a second-level source.

You need to be most careful not to give the reader the impression that
you have done the work that was really done by the writer of the second-
level source.

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Quoting quotations
A common problem arises because, almost inevitably, the books you read for
an essay will themselves contain quotations from other books, often the most
relevant and useful quotations for the topic. You must be careful here,
because you should not give the reader the impression that you have read
books that you haven’t! You did not do the work of finding the quotation, so
you should not claim you did. If you simply quote the words you find, you are
not acknowledging the source from which you got the words, which is actually
the book you are reading, and so are in danger of breaching the declaration of
academic integrity. In fact, the best advice is probably not to quote at one
remove.

If you do decide it’s necessary the first rule is check the quotation.
Researchers in the humanities spend a lot of time on doing just this. How do
you know that the book you are reading has quoted accurately or given the
proper reference? Misprints and other accidents may occur. The quotation
may actually have been taken out of context and when you read the whole
passage, you may decide the writer in whose work you found the quotation
has misrepresented the source.

You need to go back to the original source of the quotation to check the
reference. If it is a quotation from a classic work that exists in many editions
and/or translations, you may decide that checking its accuracy from a different
edition is enough, but then you should quote and refer to the source you used
to check it as you cannot vouch for the accuracy of the reference in the
second-level source.

If you cannot check the quotation, either because the original source is not
available or because time will not permit, you must give a reference both to
the source of the quotation and to the place where it is quoted e.g.

Jeremy Fisher The Crimes of Peter Rabbit (Oxford, Oxford University

Press, 1987) p. 45, quoted in Jemima Puddleduck ‘Peter Rabbit
Vindicated’ Journal of Beatrix Potter Studies 2 (1999) pp. 2-12; p. 5.
{Note: this is a made-up example for this purpose – which is not any
kind of excuse for you inventing references in your assessed work!)

Referring to both sources is best practice in any case.

Quoting Summaries
Another common problem for a reader of essays is to find that a student
suddenly seems to have become an expert on obscure 19th Century
commentaries on the book of Job, for instance. In the middle of a not very
good essay, there may be a long list of arguments along the lines of

‘Whereas Eisberg saw Job as a comedy, Schmidt and Schleswig-Holstein

emphasis the tragic aspects.’

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It is usually fairly obvious that the student hasn’t actually read what any of
these people say, particularly when the books are out of print and in a foreign
language. The same thing can happen with contemporary English authors,
however. The list of authors and opinions is not the student’s own work; it
comes from some second-level source.

Here again, it is not enough to put the second-level source in a bibliography,

or even to footnote a reference to the page. You need to do these, but you
also need to put a phrase in the text like ‘According to Brown, …’. This both
acknowledges that Brown did the work, but also to some extent protects you if
Brown got it all wrong!

WORKING WITH ANOTHER STUDENT

It hardly needs saying that copying another student’s work and passing it off
as your own is unacceptable, with or without their consent. Trying to gain
credit for essays available on the internet or from other sources is also clearly
unacceptable.

A more difficult case arises when two students have worked together or have
shared books, so that the reader notices similar quotations, arguments or
overall structures between the two essays and the question arises whether
these are parallels, or whether one student has depended on another. In
such cases, if the matter cannot be resolved, the mark may be halved and
shared between the students. It is in both your interests, then, to make sure
that your work can be seen to be independent.

There can also be a problem if there are a limited number of books available
for a large class and similar quotations and bibliographies appear. In such
cases, it is doubly important to show not only that you can quote material, but
that you are capable of summarising it and structuring your essay
independently. Note the warnings under summaries above.

IN CONCLUSION

Though plagiarism is a serious offence, if you are clear, careful and honest
there should be no problem. Don’t let the fear of plagiarism keep you from
using to the full the amazing resources in other people’s writings. Learning
how to make proper and responsible use of other people’s work in developing
your own understanding of a subject is the heart of academic life. Reading
good scholarly work should also give you useful examples and models of
good practice and you should actively look out for ways in which these may
help you improve your own writing.

A final word: If in doubt, ASK!

HSP 16/06/00

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