Plagiarism: information and advice
This guide will help you recognise what plagiarism is and help you avoid it by carrying out
your research and writing thoughtfully and responsibly. It contains these sections:

What is plagiarism?

Why does it matter?

How to avoid plagiarism

Consequences of plagiarism
What is plagiarism?
In academic writing, plagiarism is the inclusion of any idea or any language from someone
else without giving due credit by citing and referencing that source in your work. This
applies if the source is print or electronic, published or unpublished, another student’s work,
or any other person.
Plagiarism can occur for a number of reasons:

Simply not understanding what plagiarism is.

Not citing or referencing properly within your work.

Pressure from deadlines and/or poor time-management leading to a ‘cut and paste’
approach to research.

Disorganised research and note-taking leading to confusion between your own
thoughts and ideas taken from other sources.

A lack of confidence in putting things into your own words.
Plagiarism can take many forms. Here are some examples:

Quoting another’s work ‘word for word’ (verbatim) without placing the phrase(s),
sentence(s) or paragraph(s) in quotation marks and providing a clear citation and
reference.

Summarising or paraphrasing* the work or ideas of another without citing and
referencing the original source.
Please note: Summarising/paraphrasing is not changing a few words here and there
from the original. If the language and sentence structure you use is too close to that
in the original then you are plagiarising, even if you provide a citation.
HHeywood 2014 Adapted from the University of Bristol, Library study guides
Summarising/paraphrasing is putting across the source’s ideas in your own words;
restating the ideas in your own way.

Using statistics, tables, figures, formulae, diagrams, questionnaires, images, musical
notation, computer code etc. created by others without citing and referencing the
original source.

Copying the work of another student, with or without their consent.

Collaborating with another student and then presenting the resulting work as one’s
own (Consult your tutor if you are unsure about the extent of collaboration
permitted in any joint work).

Submitting, in whole or in part, work which has previously been submitted at the
University of Bristol or elsewhere, without citing and referencing the earlier work.
This includes re-using your own submitted work without citing and referencing
(known as self-plagiarism).

Buying or commissioning an essay or other piece of work and presenting it as your
own.
Why does it matter?
In academic writing a high premium is placed on original thought which utilises and builds
on the knowledge and ideas of others. You are expected to do your own thinking, and will
be assigned work by your lecturers in order to analyse the ideas you have read about and to
develop your own thoughts in reply to them.
When you conduct research for your own assignments, you will be relying on the citations
and references provided by other authors in order to find material relevant to your topic. In
the exact same way, when you are writing your own work, when you are the author, you
will be responsible for providing your readers with a route back to the sources you used so
that they can also follow the progression of ideas. Your work needs to be placed within the
context of other related work; if you plagiarise this context will be lost.
Whenever you directly quote, paraphrase, or summarise someone else’s ideas, you have a
responsibility to give due credit to that person for their work. And by crediting that person,
through proper citing and referencing, you will enable your lecturer, and whoever else may
read your work, to understand what led you to your conclusions and to see that you have
researched both widely and thoroughly.
How to avoid plagiarism
There are two main types of plagiarism, intentional and unintentional. The easiest to avoid
is intentional plagiarism. If you are tempted to ‘borrow’ someone else’s ideas (i.e. copying
whole passages from a book, article, website, or a friend's assignment) without citing the
HHeywood 2014 Adapted from the University of Bristol, Library study guides
author because you are short on time, stressed, or you do not fully understand the topic you
are writing about, simply don’t do it. The consequences of plagiarism are much worse than
handing in an assignment late or handing in a piece of work you are not 100% satisfied
with.
In many cases, plagiarism is unintentional and caused by a lack of organisation, carelessness,
confusion, or a mix of all three. The bad news is that regardless of whether you intended to
plagiarise or not you will still be held responsible for the work you hand in and the
consequences will be the same. The good news is that there are two easy steps you can take
to avoid unintentionally plagiarising:
(a) understand what question you are trying to answer and what process you are entering
into when you write an assignment
(b) use a methodical approach when planning and writing your assignments.
With this in mind, below is a checklist of tips to conduct your research thoughtfully and
responsibly and to help you avoid plagiarising:

Plan ahead – allow enough time to plan and write up your work.

Keep track of your sources. When doing research keep a record of everything you
read, including author, title, publication place and date. If you are reading online
material, keep a note of the author, title, date (if there is one), URL, and the date
that you viewed the page. Try using Mendeley. This piece of software, which can be
downloaded for free and access on all devices, enables you to keep track of the
references you find as you research and to organise them so that you can find them
again easily.

Paraphrase carefully in your note-taking and use notation in your notes to indicate
what you have paraphrased so that when you come to writing up, your own
thoughts and those of others will not be confused.

Quote your sources correctly. If you copy pieces of text directly into your notes,
make sure you mark them in some way, e.g. by enclosing in quotation marks, so you
will know at a later point that they are direct quotations.

Never paraphrase or quote from a source without immediately adding a citation to
your notes. You could end up forgetting to add a citation and then inadvertently
taking credit for work that is not yours.

Ask. If you are unsure or have any questions about plagiarism at any point during
your research or writing-up then ask Academic Skills or your lecturer.

Before you hand in your work, check the following:
HHeywood 2014 Adapted from the University of Bristol, Library study guides
1. Have you enclosed all direct quotations in quotation marks and cited the
source (e.g. have you included a page number)?
2. Have you cited a source for any text that you have paraphrased?
3. Do all your in-text citations have a corresponding reference in the list of
references at the end of your work?

Save all your research, i.e. notes, photocopies, PDFs, printouts, until your work has
been assessed.
The consequences of plagiarism are serious and can be accessed via
this link.
http://www.marjon.ac.uk/about-marjon/institutional-documents/student-handbook-201415/policy-and-procedures/SH-2014-15-Part-B-(P&P)---15-Student-misconductprocedure.pdf
HHeywood 2014 Adapted from the University of Bristol, Library study guides