UNSW Academic Misconduct and Student Misconduct Policies

Plagiarism involves using the work of another person and presenting it as one’s own. Acts of plagiarism include copying parts of a document without acknowledging and providing the source for each quotation or piece of borrowed material. These rules against plagiarism apply whatever the source of the work relied upon may be, whether printed, stored on a compact disc or other medium, found on the World Wide Web or Internet.

Similarly, using or extracting another person’s concepts, experimental results or conclusions, summarising another person’s work or, where, there is collaborative preparatory work, submitting substantially the same final version of any material as another student constitutes plagiarism.

It is your responsibility to make sure you acknowledge within your writing where you have “sourced” the information, ideas and facts etc.

The basic principles are that you should not attempt to pass off the work of another person as your own, and it should be possible for a reader to check the information and ideas that you have used by going to the original source material. Acknowledgment should be sufficiently accurate to enable the source to be located speedily. If you are unsure whether, or how, to make acknowledgment consult your lecturer.

The following are some examples of breaches of these principles:

1. Quotation without the use of quotation marks. It is a serious breach of these rules to quote another’s work without using quotation marks, even if one then refers to the quoted source. The fact that it is quoted must be acknowledged in your work.
2. Significant paraphrasing, eg. several sentences, or one very important sentence, which in wording are very similar to the source. This applies even if the source is mentioned, unless there is also due acknowledgment of the fact that the source has been paraphrased.
3. Unacknowledged use of information or ideas, unless such information or ideas are commonplace.
4. Citing sources (eg texts) which you have not read, without acknowledging the ‘secondary’ source from which knowledge of them has been obtained.
   These principles apply to both text and footnotes of sources. They also apply to sources such as teaching materials, and to any work by any student (including the student submitting the work) which has been or will be otherwise submitted for assessment. You must obtain the prior approval of your lecturer if you wish to submit to that lecturer an essay substantially similar to one which has already been, or will be, submitted to another lecturer.

Using the principles mentioned above about proper acknowledgment, you should also proceed on the general assumption that any work to be submitted for assessment should in fact be your own work. It ought not be the result of collaboration with others unless your lecturer gives clear indication that, for that assignment, joint work or collaborative work is acceptable. In this latter situation, you should specify the nature and extent of the collaboration and the identity of your co-workers. Students should note that essays and written assignments may be tested for a match ie source documents on the Internet.