Faculty of Management & Technology

PLAGIARISM GUIDELINES

I Introduction

In general, plagiarism can be defined as the unacknowledged use of the work of

others as if this were one’s own original work. In the context of an examination, this
amounts to passing off the work of others as one’s own to gain unfair advantage.
Such use of unfair means will not be tolerated by the GUC; if detected, the penalty
may be severe and may lead to failure to obtain one’s degree.

II The scope of plagiarism

Plagiarism may be due to:

 copying (using another person's language and/or ideas as if they are one’s
own);
 collusion (unauthorised collaboration).

Methods include:

 quoting directly another person's language, data or illustrations without clear

indication that the authorship is not one’s own and due acknowledgement of
the source;
 paraphrasing the critical work of others without due acknowledgement – even
if one changes some words or the order of the words, this is still plagiarism if
one is using someone else's original ideas and is not properly acknowledging
it;
 using ideas taken from someone else without reference to the originator;
 cutting and pasting from the Internet to make a 'pastiche' of online sources;
 colluding with another person, including another candidate (other than as
might be permitted for joint project work);
 submitting as part of one’s own report or dissertation someone else's work
without identifying clearly who did the work (for example, where research has
been contributed by others to a joint project).

Plagiarism can occur in respect to all types of sources and all media:

 not just text, but also illustrations, musical quotations, computer code etc;
 not just text published in books and journals, but also downloaded from
websites or drawn from other media;
 not just published material but also unpublished works, including lecture
handouts and the work of other students.

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III How to avoid Plagiarism

The stylistic conventions for different subjects vary and students should consult their
supervisor about the conventions pertaining in a particular subject area. However,
this is basically how sources should be identified as someone else’s:

 One must be especially careful with cutting and pasting work from electronic
media; students should not fail to attribute the work to its source. If authorship
of the electronic source is not given, students should ask themselves whether
it is worth copying or give the full Internet address.

 When presenting the views and work of others, include in the text an indication
of the source of the material, e.g. ...as Kalhöfer (1993) has shown,....
and give the full details of the work quoted in the bibliography.
 If students quote text verbatim, place the sentence in inverted commas and
give the appropriate reference, e.g. 'The elk is of necessity less graceful than
the gazelle' (Klischewski 2002: 46) and give the full details in their
bibliography as above.
 If students wish to set out the work of another at length so that they can
produce a counter-argument, set the quoted text apart from their own text (e.g.
by indenting a paragraph) and identify it by using inverted commas and adding
a reference as above. E.g. by writing,

Hühn (2005: 87) holds the following viewpoint:

“The elk is of necessity less graceful than the gazelle, while the
elk is much better adapted to severe winters of the north of the
Americas and Europe.”

This view is criticised by Kiehling (2005: 67-69), El-Badawi (2006: 2), and
Lang (2006: 33)…

 If one is copying text, one should always keep a note of the author and the
reference as one goes along, with the copied text, so that one will not
mistakenly think the material to be one’s own work when coming back to it in a
few weeks' time.

 If students reproduce an illustration or include someone else's data in a graph

include the reference to the original work in the legend: e.g. (figure redrawn
from Mohamed 2001) or (triangles = data from Mohamed 2001).
 If one wishes to collaborate with another person on a project, one should
check with the supervisor whether this might be allowed.
 If students have been authorised to work together with another candidate or
other researchers, they must acknowledge their contribution fully in their
introductory section. If there is likely to be any doubt as to who contributed
which parts of the work, the student should make this clear in the text
wherever necessary. E.g. I am grateful to A. Smith for pointing out that in
Germany there are different bank consortia with different fee structures.

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  Paraphrasing is often very tempting but it should be clearly stated were ideas
are from. Indeed one criterion of good academic work is that many different
ideas of other people are combined in a new way. Thus, paraphrasing without
telling the marker that one is using other people’s ideas is counterproductive. It
also sticks out like a sore thumb.

The Golden Rule for students

The examiners must be in no doubt as to which parts of your work are your
own original work and which are the rightful property of someone else!

IV Plagiarism is easy to detect and will be detected

The GUC employs a series of sophisticated software applications to detect plagiarism

in submitted examination work, both in terms of copying and collusion. It reserves the
right to check samples of submitted essays for plagiarism. Although the use of
electronic resources by students is encouraged, the GUC will punish severely any
attempt to use other people’s material without proper attribution. That means that as
a rule all submitted written work which is found to be plagiarised in parts or
completely will be given a mark of zero. However, as the line between culpable
plagiarism and plagiarism rooted in inexperience is sometimes difficult to draw the
GUC has differentiated responses to different levels of plagiarism. The decision on
which penalty will be applied lies with the marker or in severe cases with the Board of
Examiners or the Dean (cf. Study Regulations; Examination Regulations; Absence,
Withdrawal, Deception, and Violations, p. 22)

The penalties are (increasing in severity):

 re-submitting of the written work (first offenders, offence clearly due to

academic inexperience, over-reliance on one source);
 re-marking the original work with the plagiarised works removed (same as
above);
 reduction of mark depending on the extent of the plagiarism and the
experience of the student;
 a mark of zero;
 Expulsion from the university.