What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined as passing off someone else's work as your own. This can be research, statements, images and statistical data.
Plagiarism occurs when you don’t acknowledge where the information that you have used in your assignment came from. For example, copying directly from a text word-for-word, using text downloaded from the Internet, paraphrasing the words of a text very closely, downloading or copying pictures, photographs, or diagrams without acknowledging your sources.
Sometimes plagiarism might be deliberate, and sometimes you may be accused of plagiarism because you have not understood how to paraphrase another author's work or if you do not use correct referencing.
The most important thing you can do to avoid plagiarism is to reference your work.
Why should I care about plagiarism?
In the UK academic community, plagiarism is considered to be a form of Academic Theft.
Staffordshire University has important Academic Misconduct guidelines with consequences if you break these that can lead to disciplinary action and expulsion from courses.
Will my lecturer know if I have plagiarised?
YES!
Staff are aware of research in their subject area and they have supported many students through their studies and can identify changes in writing style etc, that may indicate plagiarism.
The University uses a National plagiarism software solution, Turnitin. This software enables student work to be submitted and checked against a national database for elements of plagiarism
