School of Mathematical Sciences UG Student Handbook 2024/25

Queen Mary defines plagiarism as: “Presenting someone else’s work as your own, irrespective of intention. Close paraphrasing, copying from the work of another person, including another student, using the ideas of another person without proper acknowledgement or repeating work you have previously submitted – at Queen Mary or at another institution - without properly referencing yourself (known as ‘self plagiarism’) also constitute plagiarism.”

 

Academic Misconduct Policy

Plagiarism is a serious offence and all students suspected of plagiarism will be subject to an investigation. If found guilty, penalties can range from failure of the module to suspension or permanent withdrawal from Queen Mary.

It is your responsibility to ensure that you understand plagiarism and how to avoid it by appropriate referencing of sources. The recommendations below can help you avoid plagiarism.

• Be sure to record your sources when taking notes and cite these if you use ideas or, especially, quotations from the original source. Be particularly careful if you are cutting and pasting information between two documents and ensure that references are not lost in the process.
• Be sensible in referencing ideas – commonly held views that are generally accepted do not always require acknowledgement to particular sources. However, it is best to err on the side of caution to avoid plagiarism.
• Be particularly careful with quotations and paraphrasing.
• Be aware that technology is now available at Queen Mary and elsewhere that can automatically detect plagiarism.
• Ensure that all works used are cited appropriately in the text of your work and fully credited in your reference list or bibliography.
• See the next chapter for guidance on referencing.
• If in doubt, ask for further guidance from your project supervisor, module organiser or advisor.

It should be noted that failure to properly credit other students’ work on group assessments or group presentations can also be classed as plagiarism. 

Also the use of ghost writing (e.g. essay mills, Chegg, code writers etc.) and generally using someone external to the institution to produce assessment is an assessment offence.

Any assessment offence investigations will follow the QMUL Academic Misconduct Policy.

Turnitin statement for the school of mathematical sciences

Turnitin is a web-based plagiarism detection system used by most universities in the UK. This section describes how Turnitin is used within the School of Mathematical Sciences and the data it creates about your work.

HOW TURNITIN WORKS

A Turnitin assignment is set up by a member of staff on QMplus. You then access this assignment online and upload your work before the due date. Turnitin will analyse the submitted work to identify text matches with other sources and will compare the work against:

• the current and archived web;
• previously submitted work;
• books and journals.

For each piece of submitted work Turnitin provides two things:

• a similarity index, which indicates the percentage of the submitted paper that Turnitin has identified as matching other sources;
• an originality report, which shows each of these matches in more detail, including the source(s) that Turnitin has found.

HOW TURNITIN IS USED WITHIN THE SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

Turnitin is used on all summative coursework, project modules and various assignments that contribute towards your final grade. Turnitin will not normally be used on the following:

• short assignments (under 500 words),
• contributions to online discussions,
• exercises submitted on paper,
• exams,
• short multiple choice tests on computer programs.

For those assignments where Turnitin is used, all submissions to that assignment will be submitted to Turnitin.

How we use the information provided by Turnitin:

• Only academic staff will make a judgement on whether plagiarism has occurred in a piece of work. An academic may be guided by the originality report but Turnitin itself does not make the judgement.
• We do not use a threshold percentage to identify whether plagiarism has occurred and may review any originality report in detail.
• Turnitin will highlight matching text such as references, quotations, common phrases and data tables within work that has no plagiarism issues at all. Those interpreting Turnitin reports will discount such matches and so initial percentages are often irrelevant.
• Where it is suspected that plagiarism has occurred in a piece of work, the originality report may be submitted to the Head of School and possibly to an Assessment Offences Panel for further investigation.

 

How we use the information provided by Turnitin:

• There will be an opportunity for you to see a Turnitin report on your work before Turnitin is used on your assessed work.
• To help you understand what the report is telling you and what it looks like, please ensure you have followed the guidance on the E-Learning Unit’s website (http://www.elearning.capd.qmul.ac.uk/guide/interpreting-your-originality-report/).
• No other student will be able to see an originality report on your work
• You may find it helpful to resubmit your work after reviewing the originality report and you will generally be given one opportunity to do this. Where this is the case, the idea is to use the report to help you identify any potential issues you may not have spotted before, and not to change individual words to avoid a match. Be aware of the referencing (next chapter) and plagiarism guidance (at the beginning of this chapter).
• If you have a question about your originality report that is not answered by the material linked to in 2.4.3 above, please direct these to your module organiserin the first instance.

Other things you should know about Turnitin:

• Turnitin stores a copy of most work submitted to it in its repository. This does not affect the ownership of or any copyright in the original work.
• Staff may configure a Turnitin assignment such that copies of submissions are not stored in its database. This will be done for all test-runs or any ‘dummy’ assignments used for training or demonstration purposes
• Staff on your course will ensure that no commercially or otherwise sensitive documents are stored in Turnitin’s repository.
• You cannot opt out of having your work scanned by Turnitin, but if you believe that your work should be deleted after it is scanned you should contact your lecturer.

 

You will have a chance to view your Turnitin report after you submit the final version of your assignment; for guidance please see the E-Learning Unit Turnitin page.

The next chapter will provide useful information including examples of proper bibliographies and of referencing techniques in the style favoured by the school for all media commonly used by students, e.g. books, journal articles, websites, films, DVDs.