|
This page introduces intellectual ownership and plagiarism. Students from some cultures may reproduce the work of others verbatim in the belief that they are honouring them or merely reproducing the 'best' way of expressing something. Whatever the motives, this is regarded as plagiarism and the page gives some pointers on how to avoid it. |
Everyone has what is known as ‘intellectual copyright’ or ‘intellectual property rights’ on what they write. No formal patent is necessary. Plagiarism is taking the written work of others and passing it off as one’s own – although the meaning is increasingly becoming blurred to include passing off the ideas of others as one’s own. It is not plagiarism to quote short passages, provided that one points out where the quotation comes from and uses it for illustration or criticism. It is plagiarism to copy a chunk of material and present it without indicating its source as if it is one’s own. Plagiarism is a form of fraud and malpractice.
The Internet, particularly on-line academic journals, may seem to provide considerable scope for taking the written work of others and passing it off as one’s own. Cases are even reported of students with short research projects buying complete theses or dissertations on the Internet. This is something they could never get away with on a full research programme like a PhD, as there are too many checks along the way, which would immediately alert supervisors. In particular supervisors can often spot plagiarized chunks of text because the different authorship of the various sections is so obvious from the different writing styles. To add to the armoury against plagiarism, there are on-line tools which take only minutes to analyze and compare text. Supervisors can run the software themselves, but common practice is to ask students to do it as part of their personal development, and to produce the downloaded report as evidence. Blatant plagiarism is being taken very seriously indeed. Do it at your peril. Not only would you be risking the most severe of penalties, you would also be destroying the educational value of your programme of work. |
| Although plagiarism is simply wrong, students from some backgrounds do it in good faith – to indicate that they have studied what the ‘experts’ have written and to honour those experts. Understandable as this may be, it cannot be allowed to continue. It is unlikely to remain unnoticed for long, and no-one would ever accept that a student of more than a few months into a research programme is anything but fully aware that plagiarism is unacceptable. The penalties can be very severe indeed, and can be applied retrospectively, even after students have graduated.
The way to avoid this sort of plagiarism is simple. Every time you use someone else’s work, simply say so and cite the source. If you feel uncomfortable about this or find that your work is consisting of too many quotations or citations from elsewhere, you are probably not subjecting the material to your own independent thought. Your personal critical analysis is what is important. So try to present the work of others in terms of what they 'consider' / 'describe' / 'suggest' / 'argue for' / 'explain' / 'conclude' … etc and then add how much confidence you feel that their work generates and why. Another plagiarism-avoidance technique is to rewrite what someone else has written, but concentrating on leaving out what is peripheral to one’s own argument (while not misrepresenting); and then stressing where it is in agreement, where it is in disagreement and where it is particularly fascinating from your point of view. By the time you have done this, you may feel quite comfortable that what you have written genuinely is your own and that all you need to do is to cite the source material.
|
HOME | For supervisors | For management and training personnel | contact | site map
