This online tutorial is designed to help you identify what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.

The aim of this online tutorial is:

• To ensure you are very clear on what plagiarism is

• To provide you with information that will support you to be academically honest

• To support you to attain the skills that you need for academic honesty/ integrity

Information and exercises will be provided and the Guide is intended as a resource for you, to which you can return for guidance and direction during your academic career.

Plagiarism is often linked to dishonesty as sometimes a student deliberately copies another’s work without acknowledgement. However, often plagiarism can be the result of genuine misunderstanding when you as a new student are still learning about academic writing.

Most academic writing projects require you to gather, evaluate and use the work of others. You cannot use other people’s ideas, words, images or data in your assignments unless you provide full details of your sources.

We want to support you as a student to be informed from the beginning so that plagiarism does not arise as an issue for you in your work in university.

Academic honesty and integrity is very important in higher education and you need certain information and skills so that you can ensure academic integrity in your assignments. This tutorial is designed to help you as you start your studies in higher education.

College has very specific rules when it comes to plagiarism. You need to learn them to succeed and to uphold the core values of academic integrity, which include honesty, fairness and responsibility. So this tutorial is essential for you as a Trinity student.

The institution has a very clear policy, which you need to understand. Click on one of the provided links to view the institutional policy.

Let us examine some definitions of academic dishonesty. The first three are easily understood - collusion, cheating and impersonation. But plagiarism is more difficult to understand so you need some knowledge about it and a set of skills in order to ensure that you are being academically honest.

Neville has identified three main form of plagiarism which are outlined here.

So you think you know what plagiarism is but given different scenarios can you decide what is correct?

Try the following activities and see do you make the correct decision.

How did you get on? Here are some examples of plagiarism adapted from the University of Wolverhampton’s Guide to Plagiarism, ‘Write Right’ (2014).

In school you are rewarded in exams for remembering and writing down a viewpoint, information, or an idea but you are not required to say where this comes from. In university study, you need to be able to find and use other peoples’ ideas to put forward arguments in your writing. In academic writing, you are entering a conversation and much has already been written and you must always acknowledge the writers that you have read and drawn ideas and information from. You are not starting the conversation, but continuing the conversation and so you must give credit to the author/authors. Even if you use your own words. If you obtain the information or ideas you are presenting from a source you must document that source.

An author’s ideas include:

• Outlining a specific method or theory or a list of steps in a process detailed by an author

• Using tables, photographs, diagrams or statistics from a source

• Presenting the ideas of an author using direct quotations from the source

• Presenting the ideas of an author by summarising a source or paraphrasing

• Using the ideas of an author to support an argument you are making in your assignment

Citing sources shows that you are entering the conversation already begun in the academic or professional community. Citing others will improve your academic writing by clearly creating an intellectual basis and framework for your writing and result in better writing and better grades. You need to ensure that that the reader knows where your ideas and others’ ideas start and finish. This ensures that your work is underpinned by academic integrity.

In order to avoid plagiarism you must consistently and accurately use some form of referencing system. There are many types of referencing systems including the Harvard system; APA (American Psychological Association); the number system (as used in Engineering); and the footnoting system. Schools and disciplines have preferred options regarding which referencing system to use. It is best to ask your school and check for specific guidelines.

You will need to be able to handle the inclusion of:

• Direct quotations

· Paraphrasing & summary of ideas

· Tables and statistical material

· References cited by another person

· References to web-based materials

· References to newspaper articles and other resources

There are times when you do not need to reference.

When you are presenting your own experiences, and also, in each discipline area, there are examples of common knowledge material that do not need to be referenced.

Examples include various mathematical and scientific formulae, medical terms, and general concepts in law that are used regularly without reference to the original author.

However, as a student new to higher education, it can be difficult to know what constitutes common knowledge in a given field and so it is more sensible to make plentiful use of references.

Academic writing at University requires you to read the texts of expert writers in the field and then to outline, analyse and synthesise the arguments and ideas being proposed.

There are three main ways of incorporating the work of other writers into your own writing. You can direct quote, summarise or paraphrase, and these are techniques that are essential for you to use in your academic writing to provide support for claims, to show the breadth of your reading, to give examples of several points of view on a subject or to highlight an important sentence or phrase.

If you use an author’s specific words, you must place the words within quotation marks and you must credit the source. Use quotation for specific purposes:

· To present a very well-stated passage of text the meaning of which would be lessened if paraphrased

· To present an idea or argument to comment on

Use a summary to write an overview in your own words of the main ideas, issues and general meanings of a text. It is about giving a general picture but you must cite the original author.

When you paraphrase focus on a particular issue, idea or section in a text and using your own words put forward the meaning of the original text.

Again you must cite the original author.

Read this example of academic writing and we will examine how we might draw from this source.

Here we have an example of a summary taken from the original source.

This is an example of how one might paraphrase from the original document.

And this is a direct quotation taken from the original source.

Quoting, summarising and paraphrasing are important skills to develop your academic writing but you will need to express your own thoughts or views on the material.

You cannot just rely on the ideas and thoughts of other people but in the early years of your study, you are not expected to make original contributions. Rather your contribution to what has already been written will relate to the choice you make about what you want to present and the way you analyse the material.

In the Humanities and Social Sciences, what is important is that your views should be informed, clearly expressed and based on careful consideration of the views of seminal writers and thinkers on the topic.

In scientific disciplines, you must show that you have a complete knowledge and understanding of the relevant scientific principles and in the analysis and interpretation, you can make your contribution.

For more on this check out the online handbook, Developing your Academic Writing Skills.