EECS Student Handbook 2023/24

Plagiarism is the failure to credit the writings or ideas of another person that you have used in your own work. In such cases you are, deliberately or inadvertently, attempting to pass their work off as your own. Plagiarism is a serious offence, and can carry severe consequences, from failure of the module to deregistration from the College. You may also commit plagiarism by failing to reference your own work that you have already used in a previous essay, or by failing to credit the input of other students on group projects.

It is your responsibility to ensure that you understand plagiarism and how to avoid it. The recommendations below can help you in avoiding plagiarism.

• Be sure to record your sources when taking notes, and to 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 acknowledgment to particular sources. However, it is best to be safe 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 referenced appropriately in the text of your work and fully credited in your bibliography.
• If in doubt, ask for further guidance from your adviser or module tutor.

The material that you submit for assessment, whether in an answer script in a written examination or as assessed coursework, must be your own unaided work. Cheating in written examinations and plagiarism in assessed coursework are examination offences.

Plagiarism in assessed coursework - this is the use or presentation of the work of another person, including another student, as your own work (or as part of your own work) without acknowledging the source. Plagiarism therefore includes submitting the work of someone else as your own, and extensive copying from someone else's work in your own paper or report.

Brief quotations from the published or unpublished work of other persons may be used, but must always be clearly indicated by being placed inside quotation marks, with the source indicated in some way, and the work listed in the bibliography at the end of your own piece of work.

It can also be plagiarism to summarise another person's ideas or judgements without reference to the source.

·         Copying material from web pages without acknowledgement is plagiarism.

 ·        Copying programs (for example from the Internet) without explanation of where they are from or how much you have modified the programs is also plagiarism

 ·         Copying from another student (with or without their consent) is plagiarism and both parties will be subject to investigation and possible penalty.

 ·         Do not copy and do not allow others to copy from you.

When you are taking notes for a paper or piece of coursework, it is important to include all the sources you have used, and to indicate any quotations so that you can make the necessary references when you come to write the paper. "Unconscious plagiarism", including an un-attributed quotation because you did not identify quotations in your notes, is as much an examination offence as deliberate plagiarism, and will be dealt with in the same way as any other examination offence. 

You can find more information on study support provided by Student Services:

http://www.library.qmul.ac.uk/subjects_support

http://www.learningdevelopment.qmul.ac.uk/