Plagiarism

The Accidental Plagiarist (1) Over the years I've had to deal with quite a few plagiarism cases. A surprising number of them are accidental, and this is a story I've heard a few times, usually from hard working students who are baffled and very upset that they've been accused of plagiarism. The problem boils down to poor working methods. The student will get hold of some literature and decide to take notes from it. What they actually do is copy it, word for word. Some time later they gather their notes together in order to write the essay, but what they actually do is copy their notes into the essay word for word. This means the finished essay has large sections of copied text from the original source which the student never intended should happen.

Apart from the obvious problem with accidental plagiarism, this is a very poor way to learn. It's important to engage with the material you're studying in order to understand it. Putting those ideas into your own words is a good way to do that, but talking about it to colleagues or raising the material in seminars can also work.

The Accidental Plagiarist (2) This is perhaps the most common form of accidental plagiarism, and also the easiest to avoid. It's all about referencing. Put simply, academic writing falls into three categories. If you understand what these are, it's easier to avoid plagiarism problems The first category is where you've copied someone else's words. That's fine providing you make clear that they are someone else's words and you indicate precisely where they came from. It's important not to do too much of this - you need some original material in your work. This is called a quotation. The second category is someone else's ideas which you've put into your own words. Again this is perfectly acceptable practice provided you make it clear what you've done and where it came from. The third category is material which is entirely your own words and ideas. There will be no references in this sort of writing. All of this means that if a section of your work has no references at all, the reader will assume that it's in the third category. If it's actually in the first or second categories, you're open to charges of plagiarism. Likewise if you have referenced but not made clear that you've borrowed the words and not just the ideas of the author you cite, you can be accused of plagiarism. I'll cover the mechanics of referencing later.

The Accidental Plagiarist (3) This is the last common reason for accidental plagiarism, and happens to students to do their work at the last minute, usually staying up all night before the deadline. They simply haven't left sufficient time to do their work properly, and in any case are likely to be in a panic and buzzing on pro-plus. They have no option but to cut corners, and this often results in poor referencing and sloppy writing practices. Obviously this is easily avoided by planning your workload and starting well in advance. A variation on this theme where the student isn't really at fault, is where something terrible has happened in the student's life They might be too distracted to work properly, or have insufficient time to do the work effectively. This could be illness, family problems or any number of the personal problems all of us face from time to time. In this case the best thing to do is to talk to your university about the problems you're having before you hand any work in. Universities are usually sympathetic to students having personal problems; after all in an age of league tables they need you to do well. It's much easier to move deadlines and put support in place than it is to pick up the pieces after fail marks or plagiarism cases.