Understanding referencing and plagiarism

Editor's Notes

• #3: UK universities are research environments. Most lecturers do research and base their writing on the style used in the books, articles and reports they read for their research. So, studying at the university, you are expected to develop the “academic” writing style. It is important to show evidence for the statements you make. You provide the evidence by telling the reader about the source of your information. The reference is the link between what you write and the evidence on which your writing is based. The purpose of referencing is to make the process of tracking back to previous research as clear as possible. Point your reader to where they can find the source or support for your statements.   Concept closely associated with Intellectual property – about the ownership of ideas; that is, all thoughts, ideas and writings belong to an individual so any use by anyone else should be acknowledged.
• #4: It is essential to provide references to works (books, e-books, journal articles, websites, newspapers, etc. ) that you have consulted for your assignments. You need to acknowledge your sources. It is a courtesy to the person whose ideas you have used. Demonstrate breadth of reading. Show that you haven’t got all the information from one or two authors, but that you have consulted more widely in order to consider different points of view and reach a balanced viewpoint on a topic. You need to demonstrate that your information has come from trustworthy sources, reputable scholarly books and journals. This can only be verified by tutors if you provide a bibliography of the materials which you have used. Your work will be taken more seriously if your sources can be traced Referencing is also part of avoiding plagiarism. As long as you acknowledge the source, using brief quotations in your work is fine in order to support your arguments. However, copying chunks of text from articles, books, Internet and passing it off as your own work is plagiarising the original source.
• #6: Intentional plagiarism   Friend offers you a paper he wrote for a similar class Buying a paper from Internet Paying someone to write a paper that you then hand in as yours Handing in a paper that someone else has heavily rewritten or revised
• #9: Don’t plagiarise – Don’t break the rules Your work should reflect your own efforts. It should acknowledge and value others’ work, which means citing and referencing their work truthfully and showing how your own work builds on theirs. Fabrication: The falsification of data, information, or citations  Deception: Providing false information to an instructor e.g., giving a false excuse for missing a deadline or falsely claiming to have submitted work. Cheating: Any attempt to give or obtain assistance in a formal academic exercise Bribery: or paid services. Giving assignment answers or test answers for money. Sabotage: Acting to prevent others from completing their work. This includes cutting pages out of library books or willfully disrupting the experiments of others. 
• #11: Whenever you use information, facts, statistics, opinions, hypotheses, graphics, or ideas from outside sources – whenever you use and words or ideas that you have not thought up yourself – you need to identify the sources of that material.  Brief (abbreviated) details of the work that you are quoting from, or to which you are referring in your text. Citing in the text you give a signal at the point of your writing, it is a link which will tell the reader that the idea or information comes from elsewhere, and where to look for more information on that source. Summary – the author’s original words are rewritten into a substantially shortened form that captures the most important elements. Paraphrase – the authors original words are substantially rewritten, but the original meaning is retained. Direct quotation – usually a short phrase where the original wording is very important. It is essential that the words quoted verbatim are clearly indicated using quotation marks (“”) and/or by using italics, indented paragraphs etc.  
• #13: Brief (abbreviated) details of the work that you are quoting from, or to which you are referring in your text
• #21: If you are quoting directly or using ideas from a specific page or pages of a work, you must include the pages number in your citation. If your citation refers to a complete work your citation would simply use the author and date details.
• #24: You can find and read the source mentioned yourself and check the accuracy. You can refer directly to this author because you have read the source yourself. You don’t list something in your references if you haven’t actually read it. You list a text where you found it,
• #32: Of course it's true that if you don't reference properly you may lose marks or be accused of plagiarism, but that's not the *reason* why proper referencing is required. Likewise, the fact that academics do proper references is less important than the reason why they do it: to acknowledge their debts to other scholars and to support their arguments by reference to the evidence