It is strongly recommended that you include an explanation of your School/Institute’s procedure in investigating assessment offence allegations in pieces of work worth 30% or less of the overall module mark.
It is strongly recommended that you include 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.
Please refer students to the resources & guidance produced by the Learning Development team
It should be noted that failure to properly credit other students’ work on group assessments can also be classed as plagiarism. If this is something that affects students in your school/institute, be sure to highlight this.
Also the use of ghost writing (e.g. essay mills, code writers etc) and generally using someone external to the institution to produce assessment should also be explicitly mentioned as an assessment offence.
Recommended general text for handbooks:
QMUL defines plagiarism as: “Presenting someone else’s work as your own, whether you meant to or not. 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 without properly referencing yourself (known as ‘self plagiarism’) also constitute plagiarism.”Regulations on Assessment Offences
Plagiarism is a serious offence and all students suspected of plagiarism will be subject to an investigation. If found guilty, penalties can include 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. 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, such as TurnItIn, 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.
