What is Plagiarism and how do I avoid it?
The ANU’s Academic Misconduct Rule 2015 defines plagiarism in rule 7. That definition states:
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Plagiarism
(1) For the purposes of this instrument, a person engages in plagiarism if the person uses
another person’s work as though it were the person’s own work.
(2) Without limiting subsection (1), a person uses another person’s work as though it were the
person’s own work if the person uses the other person’s work without appropriate attribution.
(3) A student is responsible for ensuring that the student is fully informed about the appropriate
methods of acknowledgement for any assessable work that the student submits.
The reason why plagiarism is considered academic dishonesty is because it is the academic
equivalent of appropriating another person’s words and ideas and presenting them as your own. If
you put someone else’s words or ideas into an essay without properly acknowledging their source,
you are effectively holding yourself out to the reader of your work as the person who came up with
those words or ideas. This is clearly dishonest.
Is it plagiarism if I copy from someone else’s summary or “model” answers in an online or open
book exam?
There are multiple dangers lurking in other people’s summaries or model problem answers. The
obvious ones are not related to plagiarism. Most notably, these are:
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If you use someone else’s work to get a handle on a course you are not gaining your own
understanding of legal principles and their application – you are not learning. The value in a
summary is in the learning that you do in its creation, not in the finished written product of
someone else’s learning.
The summary or model answer may contain errors that you are then incorporating into your
own answer.
The law to which the summary or model answer refers may be out of date.
In relation to particular dangers associated with plagiarism, though, you need to be aware that:
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The summary or model answer may, itself, contain plagiarised material that you are then
incorporating into your own answer. This is (double) plagiarism on your part.
If you use words or ideas from any source that you did not, yourself, create, without
acknowledging those sources, you are plagiarising. This includes lecture slides, “model”
answers, summaries etc.
Advice about using someone else’s summary or “model” answer
In a nutshell, DON’T.
What is “appropriate attribution”?
Sometimes students have difficulty working out what “appropriate” attribution or proper
“acknowledgement” means (see rules 7(2) and 7(3) above). Different disciplines will have different
citation conventions. However, some basic rules apply across all disciplines.
1. You must acknowledge the source of the words, ideas and analysis of another person in your
writing by citing the source accurately and completely. Pinpoint citations (indicating the
exact page of the words, ideas or analysis) are required for accurate and complete citation.
2. Copying someone else’s words verbatim into your own work is plagiarism (even if you
provide a pinpoint citation to the source of those words) unless you put those words in
quotation marks.
3. Paraphrasing someone else’s work where you are simply changing a few words but largely
maintaining the sentence structure, ideas, and progression of thoughts of the original writer
is also plagiarism (even if you provide a pinpoint citation to the source).
4. Explaining, clarifying or synthesising the ideas of others, using your own words, is not
plagiarism so long as a pinpoint citation to the source material is provided.
Quoting, Paraphrasing and Synthesising: Examples 1 and Advice
Say you are writing an essay on the “separation of powers” and have found a piece by Graham
Spindler entitled ‘The Separation of Powers: Doctrine and Practice’ in (2000) 12 LegalDate 5.
You are relying on Spindler’s description of the pure separation of powers doctrine in your essay.
Spindler writes (at page 5) as follows:
The doctrine of the separation of powers divides the institutions of government into three
branches: legislative, executive and judicial: the legislature makes the laws; the executive
puts the laws into operation; and the judiciary interprets the laws. The powers and functions
of each are separate and carried out by separate personnel. No single agency is able to
exercise complete authority, each being interdependent on the other. Power thus divided
should prevent absolutism (as in monarchies or dictatorships where all branches are
concentrated in a single authority) or corruption arising from the opportunities that
unchecked power offers. 2
Quoting a long paragraph (which requires indenting the text, using smaller font and providing a
pinpoint citation as above) is not a good way to use Spindler’s work in your essay. This paragraph is
not remarkable in how key concepts are expressed nor does it illuminate or advance a particular
point in your essay. Spindler is simply summarising or describing the doctrine. So, in an essay such
as this, you will need to explain the doctrine, by reference to what you have read in Spindler rather
than quoting this entire paragraph. Generally speaking, you should reserve quotes for insertion as
short phrases or key sentences because they capture an important idea or concept well or because
they are particularly eloquently expressed. Quoting a whole paragraph would only be appropriate if
it is crucial to your argument or sums up a core idea in your essay.
But if you shouldn’t quote, in this instance, how do you do you explain the doctrine based on what
you have read in Spindler?
1
This explanation of quoting, paraphrasing and synthesising is based on the approach taken in a document
produced by the University of Adelaide’s Writing Centre entitled “Avoiding Plagiarism”. It is available at:
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/learning_guides/learningGuide_avoidingPlagiarism.pdf
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Graham Spindler, ‘The Separation of Powers: Doctrine and Practice’ (2000) 12 LegalDate 5, 5.
What not to do: paraphrase
You must not engage in paraphrasing that would meet the description of plagiarism (and so would
breach the academic integrity rule). An example of paraphrasing Spindler’s paragraph would be as
follows:
The doctrine of the separation of powers splits the branches of government into three: legislative,
executive and judicial: the legislature’s role is to make the laws; the executive’s is to put the laws
into operation; and the judiciary’s is to interpret the laws. The powers and functions of each branch
are distinct and carried out by separate persons. No one agency is able to exercise complete
authority, because each depends on the others. Power that is divided this way should prevent
dictatorship (unlike where all branches are concentrated in a single power) or corruption which
might eventuate if one person or institution has all the power. 3
This kind of paraphrasing is plagiarism (notwithstanding the pinpoint citation at the end of the
paragraph) because it reproduces the structure, ideas and sentence progression of Spindler’s writing
with some minor changes of vocabulary (replacement of particular words) or omissions (removal of
some phrases). This is a particularly insidious form of plagiarism because it can obscure how much
of another person’s ideas have been appropriated by the essay writer and, in some cases, is
deliberately designed to confound Turnitin (which it doesn’t).
However, the ideas and content are not the writer’s own work, nor is it clear how much of what is
written is related to the footnote at the end of the paragraph. Just the last sentence? The whole
paragraph? So, this is an example of plagiarism.
What to do: explain and synthesise
Look at this from the point of view of the marker of your essay. What the marker needs to know is
that you have understood Spindler’s description and can render his core ideas in your own words.
Ideally, you would be synthesising your reading of a number of sources on the separation of powers
in writing your paragraph but, for illustrative purposes, let’s look at an explanation or synthesis of
Spindler’s work.
As Spindler explains, under the pure separation of powers doctrine, there are three branches of
government: the legislative branch, the executive branch and the judicial branch. Each is differently
comprised and each has a different function (making, administering or interpreting the law). The
powers of one branch are intended to curb the powers of each of the others. “Power thus divided
should prevent absolutism.” 4
This is properly referenced, includes a quote from Spindler’s paragraph (which eloquently sums up a
key idea) and indicates clearly how much of the writing is based on Spindler’s explanation of the
doctrine of the separation of powers. What differentiates it from paraphrasing is that it seeks to
3
Graham Spindler, ‘The Separation of Powers: Doctrine and Practice’ (2000) 12 LegalDate 5, 5.
4
Graham Spindler, ‘The Separation of Powers: Doctrine and Practice’ (2000) 12 LegalDate 5, 5.
summarise Spindler’s core ideas in the writer’s own words and using the writer’s own sentence
structures.
General advice about citation
Law has specific citation conventions which your lecturers will expect you to master. You must
familiarise yourself with the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC) which will be the citation
guide that you will be required to use in most (if not all) of your legal writing. A convenor will
normally indicate any special citation requirements when setting particular assessment tasks.
In general, remember:
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You must provide authority for all legal propositions (with pinpoint citations to the particular
legislative provision or the particular page of a judgment upon which the proposition is
found).
You must acknowledge the primary and secondary sources that you use when writing an
essay (with pinpoint citations to particular pages) at the appropriate points in your essay.
It is not enough to put a source in a bibliography instead of a footnote if you have used that
source at a particular point in your essay.
Normally, citations should appear in footnotes, unless you have been asked by a particular
lecturer to provide “in text” citations.
Bibliographies
When writing an academic essay, attribution is not appropriate and complete unless you have
provided a bibliography. A bibliography is a list of all the sources you have used in researching your
essay, regardless of whether you refer to them directly in your footnotes or not. Again, you must
follow the AGLC (or other required) protocol for the listing of all your sources in your bibliography.