Plagiarism

This form of plagiarism occurs when someone copies a section of work word for word without clear and full acknowledgement of the source. In some subjects, using direct quotes to illustrate an argument or analysis is standard practice. However, all direct quotations must be written in quotation marks and require an accurate reference. A reference is also needed if you directly copy or reuse an image, piece of music, data or computer code that was produced originally by someone else.

If you paraphrase the work of others without clear and full acknowledgement of the source, this is plagiarism. This may take the form of copying a section of another person’s work and changing one or two words or phrases without providing a reference to the original work, or patching together pieces of work by different authors to form a paragraph, without acknowledging any of the sources. Summarising the work of another is acceptable practice, but the source must be acknowledged.

Acquiring work produced by someone else and submitting it as your own demonstrates a lack of academic integrity and is a form of plagiarism. Whether copied from a friend, produced by a family member or paid for using a custom essay writing service, if the work you submit is not your own effort, it is plagiarism. Even if a piece of work is original, unless you created it, this would be an attempt to pass off the work of someone else as your own.

Working with other students to produce a piece of work that you submit for individual assessment (unless group work is clearly stipulated in the assessment criteria) is a form of plagiarism known as collusion. This can happen in take home exams or for assignment submissions. Collusion can include allowing another student to copy your assessed work or providing opportunity for them to do so. Some levels of proof reading may also be considered collusion.

This takes the form of submitting the same work for more than one assignment, whether for two modules at Newcastle, or re-using work you've submitted at another university as part of a different degree. Where you submit the whole or part of the same piece of work for different assessments, you are receiving credit for the same piece of intellectual work, a practice known as “double counting.” This is not the same as self-citation, where you reference yourself in a previously published or submitted piece of work in the process of creating something new. This is good academic practice, and is more commonly found in postgraduate work, where candidates may want to develop an idea or interest from their undergraduate or taught postgraduate dissertations, or later in their career where they may have amassed a body of work on a specific research field.