⚠️Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the use of any source, published or unpublished, without full and specific acknowledgement. This includes not only representing others' work or words as your own, but also re-using your own words or work across assignments or modules. It is a form of cheating which is quite easily detectable and can result in failure of modules or in disciplinary action.

Even where lax citation practices only verge on outright plagiarism and do not lead to disciplinary action, they are likely to lead to a very poor mark.

'Any source' may refer to material which is printed, electronic, another student's work (whether at this university or another), or your own work from another module or assignment. It can also involve module materials, such as lecture slides or transcripts.

Please read the following carefully:

• Purchasing an essay from someone else, or paying them to write it for you, is plagiarism.

• Submitting the same work for different modules is plagiarism — this is known as self-plagiarism.

• Collaborating with a fellow student on writing also constitutes plagiarism, unless team work is explicitly called for in the assignment brief.

• Plagiarism is not necessarily deliberate: it can result from incomplete note-taking, or haste in the final stages of an essay or project.

• Merely listing a source in the List of References is not enough — it must be referenced at the appropriate point in-text. See the section on acknowledging sources.

• You must acknowledge fully not only where you quote verbatim from a source, but also if you paraphrase a source, summarise it, or use its distinctive ideas.

You do not need to provide references for ideas that are widely accepted as matters of fact, or for any information of a general nature. For example, you don’t have to indicate a source when you mention that Shakespeare died in 1616, that Saussure was a Swiss linguist, or that /b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive.

Preventing plagiarism

When preparing your written assignments, follow this style guide carefully: this guidance is designed in part to help you avoid plagiarism. Here are some additional tips:

• In taking notes, make sure you very clearly distinguish between your source material and your own material. One suggestion would be to use different colour pens, underlining, or other markup in your notes to differentiate between your ideas and those taken from another source.

• Make sure that any notes, photocopies, or electronic files that you keep are fully documented with the name of the author and the source from which they were taken, so that you have this information readily available for your write-up.

• Never import material from an electronic source into your drafts with the intention of modifying it, or attempt to make an essay out of a patchwork of material from electronic or printed sources that you have lightly modified. Even if you acknowledge the sources it will be a very poor essay, and if you do not, it will constitute plagiarism.

• Insert your references and compile your List of References as you draft your essay; don't try to do this all at the end. A reference manager will help with this.

• Some plagiarism comes about because of last-minute panic, so organise your time well. Don’t be tempted to plagiarise because of difficult circumstances!

• For further information and advice, visit the Newcastle University ‘Right-Cite’ webpages and the Newcastle Academic Skills Kit.