Referencing your work to

avoid Plagiarism

A booklet to explain the meaning of Plagiarism and

Copyright plus guidelines on how to reference your

work using Harvard style

Plagiarism – and how to avoid it

Academic honesty

When you have found the relevant information for your essay or

assignment, you need to be able to present it in an ethical way. By

ethical we mean being aware of right and wrong conduct, being honest,

knowing the correct methods to use in presenting information and

understanding any legal requirements. This means that you have to be

aware that laws exist to protect intellectual property. The World

Intellectual Property Organisation says that “intellectual property refers

to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and

symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.”

(WIPO http://www.wipo.int)

Intellectual property is protected by copyright law. This means:

copyright is likely to apply to all of the books and journals we read at

college, and what we are allowed to copy is limited.

However, if you are allowed to photocopy a limited amount of material,

such as a single issue of a journal article under Fair Dealing, what is to

stop you handing it in as your assignment?

This can get confusing in an academic environment. After all, you are

encouraged to read as widely as possible and to build on other people's

work and ideas.

However you must make it very

clear when an idea or thought is

your own, and when it comes

from someone else. To do this,

you must learn how to cite

other people's work.

It is wrong to try and pass

someone else's ideas off as

your own.

What is Plagiarism?

Definition ‘Plagiarism; namely submitting work as the candidate’s own of

which the candidate is not the author. This includes failure to acknowledge

clearly and explicitly the ideas, words or work of another person whether

these are published or unpublished.’ (BUE Examination and assessment

regulations 2007)

If we had not put the quote in inverted commas (quotation marks) and

written the source where we found the definition, we would have been

guilty of plagiarism. Plagiarism is copying somebody else’s ideas and

saying that it is your own work. This includes writing, maps, pictures,

music, photographs – anything that uses another person’s thought. If you

use it without acknowledgement to them, this is PLAGIARISM!

Even if you plagiarise accidentally, you will still be guilty of plagiarism and

the consequences can be serious.

It is important to understand what is and is not plagiarism to avoid

unintentionally plagiarising when producing a piece of work. People

plagiarise for many different reasons:

because they cannot understand how to approach a task; they have

not left enough time to do it; they are not aware of how to reference

their sources properly;

or they do understand and deliberately plagiarise.

Some tips to help you avoid plagiarism are:

Follow correct citation and referencing

procedure

Keep bibliographic records

Make notes in your own words

Manage your time

Discussing your work with your fellow students (your peers) is one of the

most important parts of the learning process and should be encouraged.

However working too closely with colleagues can result in accusations of

copying and collusion.

The following are tips to help avoid this problem:

1. Always use your own words in your assignments rather than

copying the words used by your peers, even for small

sections.

2. Feel free to discuss your problems, interpretations and

arguments with your peers when this is appropriate. But

when it comes to producing your work ensure you have

developed your own unique interpretation rather than

adopting an agreed shared opinion.

3. If you do draw on the contribution of a peer in the completion

of an assignment make sure you clearly acknowledge this in

the assignment (this acknowledgement should include who

the source was, and the nature of the contribution).

Different assignments may vary in what is acceptable and

unacceptable practice in working with your peers (particularly

where this involves group work). If you are in any doubt you

should seek clarification from the academic member of staff before

proceeding.

We could easily be tempted to hand in work that we know is not our own

and hope the lecturer won't notice. However, lecturers do notice and the

college takes it seriously. The response is the same whether the

plagiarism is done innocently, ignorantly or deliberately - you may fail

that piece of work and in some cases the module or programme. For

more information see section 3.1 of your student handbook

So, to summarise:

It is plagiarism to:

copy material from other people including fellow students and use it

as though it was your own

incorporate published material into a piece of your work without

acknowledging where it came from

steal somebody else's ideas and use them as though they were your

own.

create a piece of work by cutting and pasting sections of text and/or

images from the internet into your essay.

Note: if you purchase a paper from a commercial service including

Internet sites, whether pre-written or specially prepared for you,

or ask another person to write your essay for you, this is cheating

and will be dealt with severely.

It is not plagiarism to:

discuss and share your ideas with others providing the final piece of

work is your own

use quotes and references in your work (be careful though, you may

lose marks if you don't produce some ideas and opinions of your

own!)

use other people's ideas as long as you acknowledge them as the

source and provide a reference

collaborate with others in a piece of group work providing every

body's contribution to the work is acknowledged.

Copyright

Intellectual property is protected by copyright law. This is

government legislation to protect the creators of works

such as books, journals, song lyrics, music, art, films and

TV programmes.

Copyright means that you need to get the owner’s permission to copy the

work –whether that is photocopying, scanning or downloading. This is the

symbol you will most often see when something is protected by copyright:

©. Be careful, though. Even if the copyright symbol is not present, the

owner still has moral and legal rights over how the work is used. So how

can we get round this in the library?

Well, there is a law of “Fair Dealing” which, for library users, means you do

not need permission to photocopy every time as long as the copy is for

your own personal use. Unfortunately, the law does not specify how much

of a work may be copied whilst still being considered ‘fair'. However it is

generally agreed that a single copy of:

5% or one article from a single issue of a journal

5% or one chapter of a book

would be considered fair dealing.

For more details about copyright go to

http://www.ahds.ac.uk/copyrightfaq.htm

How to compile a BIBLIOGRAPHY

A bibliography is a list of references to any published material that you have

used in the course of an essay or an assignment.

This material may be from a variety of sources including books, journal arti-

cles, newspapers, TV programmes, government statistics and web site ad-

dresses.

Only list in the bibliography the material that has been particularly helpful to

the assignment and any material that you have specifically mentioned in the

text of the essay or assignment. Do not include any material that initially

looked promising but actually gave you little help in the end.

When you are collecting information for an essay or an assignment, it is useful

to keep a list of all the material you are reading or consulting. Even if some

items prove to be of little use this time round, you may find them helpful in

the future.

Details of the material you are reading that you will need to keep are:

Books:

author These details should be taken from the

title title page of the book not from the cover.

edition

date of publication These will be found on the back of the

place of publication title page

publisher

Journals:

author These details are found at the beginning

title of article of the article

title of journal These details are found on the front

date & vol./issue no. cover of the journal

page no/s of article

The bibliography should appear at the end of the main text of the assignment

before any appendices.

The bibliography should be arranged alphabetically by author’s surname.

Citing the References in a Bibliography

The examples overleaf show how to cite references in a bibliography using the

Harvard System. There are other referencing systems so speak to your tutor if

they want you to use another system.

Punctuation and the order in which you list parts of the reference are important

in Harvard but may vary according to your tutors or institutions preference.

Always check to see if your tutor has a preferred .

Books

Surname, Initial/s. (Year) Title. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher.

e.g. Giddens, A. (2009) Sociology. 6th edn. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Journals

Surname, Initial/s. (Year). ‘Article’. Journal Title, Volume (issue), Pages.

e.g. Quinton, S. and Smallbone, T. (2008) ‘PDP implementation at English

universities: what are the issues’, Journal of Further and Higher Education,

32 (2), pp. 99-109.

Newspaper Articles

Surname, Initial/s. (Date). ‘Title of article/headline’, Newspaper, Date, Page

no.

e.g. Roberts, B. (2010) ‘China Crisis’, Daily Mirror, 10 November, p.11.

TV Programmes

Title of Programme (Year of transmission) Name of Channel, Day/month of

transmission.

e.g. Wallace and Gromit’s World of Invention (2010) BBC1, 11 November.

Internet

Website

Title of site (Date last updated/published) Available at: URL (Accessed:

date).

e.g. Tameside College (2010) Available at: http://www.tameside.ac.uk/

(Accessed: 10 November 2010).

Webpage

Organisation (Date last updated/published) Title of webpage. Available at:

URL (Accessed: date).

e.g. Tameside College (2010) Apprenticeships. Available at: http://

www.tameside.ac.uk/ (Accessed: 10 November 2010).

Electronic Book or Journal

To cite a document found on the web, follow a format similar to that for

books and journals but add [Online]. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

e.g. Barker, R., Harris, B. and Sutton, L. (2005) BTEC introduction : sport

and leisure. Oxford: Heinemann Educational. [Online].

Available at: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/tameside/docDetail.action?

docID=10295327&page=1 (Accessed: 12 November 2011).

Help with referencing

The Library catalogue here in college also shows items in Harvard

format. There are handouts available on using referencing in

Word 2007 in the library and on Learning Box.

If you want to read more about how to cite references or compile

a bibliography for your assignment, refer to the bibliography be-

low.

Bibliography

Bournemouth University (2010) Quick guides to referencing.

Available at:

http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/infoskills/

infoskills_refguides.html (Accessed: 11 November 2010).

Flood, A., Murray, W. and Rowell, G. (2009) Using sources: a

guide for students: find it – check it – credit it. [Online]. Availa-

ble at: http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/2009-12-24-plagiarism-

students.pdf (Accessed: 11 November 2010).

Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2008) Cite them right, the

essential referencing guide, 7th edn. Durham: Pear Tree Books.

Please don’t hesitate to ask should you require

further help

Referencing: Citations in Text (Harvard)

When you write an essay or an assignment you need to refer to any

published material you have used in the text of your assignment and at the

end in a reference list or bibliography. This helpsheet looks at in text

citations; please pick up a How to compile a bibliography guide for help

writing a reference list or bibliography.

Material you may refer to in your assignment can be from a variety of

sources including books, ebooks, journal articles, podcasts, newspapers, TV

programmes, government statistics and website addresses. There are many

ways that you can refer to your sources in the text of your assignment such

as summarising, paraphrasing or using quotations.

In-text citations

The examples show how to cite in text using the Harvard System. There are

other referencing systems so speak to your tutor if they want you to use

another system.

In text citations should include brief details of the work you are referring to

in your text. These citations then link to the full reference (with full details of

the work) in the bibliography at the end of your assignment.

Summarising

Summarising is when you give a brief statement about the key points of the

work you have used in your assignment. The only information you need in

your text is the author/s last name and date.

Examples

Craik (2009) claims that fashion is becoming an increasingly important part

of the study of culture.

OR

Fashion is becoming an increasingly important part of the study of culture

(Craik, 2009)

*Note the different author/date format depending on where you put the

citation. The citation goes at the end of the sentence if you do not mention

the author’s name in your sentence.

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is when you express an author’s writing in your own words

while keeping the original meaning. It is different to summarising as you

are giving more detailed information about a part of the text. As in

summarising, the only information you need in the text is the author/s

and date.

Examples

Chong (2008) highlights how the internet enabled animators of all levels

to display their work globally and reach audiences that were previously

inaccessible. The web has therefore become an obvious initial choice for

animators to exhibit their work.

OR

The internet enabled animators of all levels to display their work globally

and reach audiences that were previously inaccessible which made the

web an obvious choice for animators to exhibit their work (Chong, 2008).

Quotations

Quotations are used when you present an author’s writing or idea word

for word. Quotations should be used selectively to enhance your writing

and not to boost your word count! You may notice good potential

quotations as you are reading because they are impressive, worded well

or really highlight a point you are trying to make. When using quotes,

quotation marks and page numbers are needed as well as the

author/s and date.

Short Quotations (up to 2-3 lines)

These can be included in the body of your text.

Examples

Fox hunting was a popular pursuit in Britain and by the end of the

seventeenth century “its rituals, red coats, language and literature were

a part of British culture known around the world” (Marr, 2007, p. 544)

OR

Marr (2007, p. 544) states that fox hunting was popular in Britain and

“its rituals, red coats, language and literature were a part of British

culture known around the world” by the end of the seventeenth century.

Long Quotations

Long quotations should be indented from the rest of the text.

Example

Pinker (2003) describes common fears of modern biotechnological

processes:

Some people fear that cloning would present us with the option

of becoming immortal, others that it could produce an army of

obedient zombies, or a source of organs for the original person

to harvest when needed. (Pinker, 2003, p. 226)

Diagrams, illustrations and photographs should be cited like quotations,

so should also include page numbers.

But what if ……..

There is more than one author?

If there are two authors use both names, e.g. Elliott and Quinn (2008)

If there are more than two use the first last name and et al, e.g.

Bowdin et al. (2011)

There is no author?

Sometimes there may not be an author. This is common in newspapers

and websites and in this circumstance the title of the source of

information can be used, e.g. The Sun (2010) or Microsoft (2011)

A number of different sources support your text

More than one source can be referred to at a time and these can be

separated by semicolons and should be cited in date order with the

most recent year first.

Example

There have been many studies on female subcultures (Lincoln, 2004;

Reddington, 2003; McRobbie, 1976)

Further examples can be found in Pears, R. and Shields, G.

(2008) Cite them right, the essential referencing guide.

Copies are available in the library.