What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the use of the work of others without acknowledgement of your sources of information or inspiration (Cottrell 2013: 177). Plagiarism is a serious act of fraud as it involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward. Most institutions of Higher Education will penalise or even expel students found guilty of plagiarism.

According to the University of Oxford (2018 cited in Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2019: 115), the commonly found forms of plagiarism in universities are:

1.    Quoting someone else’s work, word for word, without acknowledgement.

2.    Copying, cutting and pasting text, figures, images or any other material from the Internet without acknowledgement.

3.    Paraphrasing someone else’s work by altering a few words or changing their order or closely following the structure of their argument without acknowledgement.

4.    Collaborating with others (unless expressly asked to do so such as in a group project)

5.    Inaccurately referencing, within the text and list of references, the source of a quote passage. This often occurs when students have read an original source when their knowledge is derived from a secondary source. (see section 5.8 and section 8 common mistakes).

6.    Failing to acknowledge assistance that leads to changes in the content or approach.

7.    Using materials written by others such as professional essay writing services or friends even with their consent.

8.    Auto or self-plagiarising, that is submitting work that you have already submitted for another assignment (i.e. using the same project for one course for another without the permission of the lecturer). If your work is published, you can cite this.

Some words of the original text have been changed in this list, but it is acknowledged with a source (in this case it is a secondary source.) The book used for this list is given in the reference list at the end of this guide.

Another form of cheating can be in the use of generative AI tools for your work. You should follow lecturers’ and the university’s policy on this. 

References:

Cottrell, S., 2013. The Study Skills Handbook. 4^th edition. Palgrave Macmillan.

Saunders, M., Lewis, P., and Thornhill, A., 2019. Research Methods for Business Students. 8^th edition. London: Pearson.