What is plagiarism

Plagiarism is a serious breach of ethics at UNSW and it is not taken lightly.

The idea of research is to study what others have published and form your own opinions. When you quote people - or even when you summarise or paraphrase information found in books, articles or web pages - you must acknowledge the original author.

It is plagiarism when you:

• buy or use an essay or assignment written by someone else
• cut and paste information from the web, a book or article and insert them into your paper without citing them - WARNING! It is now easy for your lecturer to use text from your essay and find passages that have been copied from the Web and other sources
• use the words, numerical data, programming language or ideas of another person without citing them
• paraphrase words, statistics or programming languages without citing them.

I find it difficult to write things in my own words...

If you have difficulty writing up your assignment, try going through the contents of the UNSW Learning Centre guide Writing Lab Reports. Not knowing how to write up a lab report is not an excuse to plagiarise! Don't be tempted to 'cut and paste' blocks of information from the internet. The Learning Centre is also a great place to go to for assistance in general study skills (such as Effective Reading and Effective Note-making from Written Text.)

Plagiarism - useful links

UNSW Learning Centre :: Plagiarism & Academic Integrity UNSW Learning Centre :: Avoiding Plagiarism UNSW Learning Centre :: Report Writing FAQ UNSW Learning Centre :: Writing Lab Reports

Plagiarism? It's Your Call!

Plagiarism ranges from copying word-for-word to paraphrasing a passage without credit and changing only a few words. Below is a sentence from a book. The original source is followed by its use in three student papers. For each student's version check the comments to see if the passage would be considered plagiarism.

		Click here to see comments on Abbie's passage.
		Click here to see comments on Brian's passage.
		Click here to see comments on Chris's passage.

Acknowledgements
1. Part of this page is adapted from Module 3 of the UNSW LILT tutorial. LILT is adapted from TILT, original copyright © 1998-2002, University of Texas Digital Library. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the TILT Open Publication License. 2. Part of this page adapted from Module 6 of Searchpath © 2001-2003, Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the SearchPath Open Publication License.

6.1	Module 6 objectives
6.2	What is plagiarism
6.3	Referencing in the APA style
6.4	Module 6 review
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