Plagio

POLICY ON PLAGIARISM


The term plagiarism refers to the unacknowledged use of someone else’s ideas; in other words, you plagiarise when you offer someone else’s thoughts and ideas as your own. You should at all times present your own work for assessment and should give correct references for all quotations, ideas and arguments from other sources. Sources of material include all printed andelectronic publications or unpublished materials, including theses and essays, written by others. Copying or paraphrasing another person’s ideas or writings, including the essays of other students, without adequate reference, is plagiarism. There are no fuzzy edges about this: if you take an idea from someone or somewhere else, you must acknowledge it by giving an accurate and full citation. It iscrucial to distinguish between common knowledge in a subject area (which does not require citation) and original ideas.

When you submit an essay or thesis, you must sign a coversheet which declares the work to be your own (these are available from the school’s office). Plagiarism is academic theft and is taken very seriously. It is a breach of UCD college discipline as outlined in Section 6.2 ofthe Student Code and the penalties for it are severe. Penalty marks will be deducted from essay grades for plagiarism and penalties may range as far as exclusion from the programme. The school may at any time conduct an oral examination to verify written work submitted. If you are ever unsure about what plagiarism is, please ask a member of the teaching staff to clarify it before you submit yourwork.
 
AVOIDING PLAGIARISM
 Taking notes
Accurate attribution of ideas starts with good note-taking procedures. As you read, make detailed notes which distinguish clearly between:
• quotations from the text you are reading;
• ideas that you wish to refer to, but do not intend to quote word-for-word; and
• your own reactions and insights to what you are reading.
 The best wayto do this is:
• place a quotation within inverted commas and provide a page number (or other appropriate source reference) in brackets beside it;
• indicate to yourself that an idea is taken from the text by writing “X argues” or “X suggests that” and so on, and give the reference(s) for the source of the idea; and
• place your own ideas in square brackets or put an asterisk by themin your notes.

Producing written work
• Provide clear references to all ideas cited (following the style sheet).
• Be aware of what is common knowledge for your subject and remember that this may vary; a module on the specific influences on Shakespearean drama may be investigating the origins of themes that another, more general, module may take as common knowledge.
•Distinguish between your ideas and those of others; see examples below for guidance.
• If you are in any doubt as to whether you should cite a source or not, cite it. It is better to have cited unnecessarily than be penalised for plagiarism.

Doing examinations

As you will not have your books available during examinations, you are not expected to quote directly. However, you should be aware of theprincipal writers in relation to specific course areas and you should attribute ideas where possible. Even if you can’t remember who said what, be careful not to pass ideas off as your own. “It has been noted that Man of Aran is an example of ‘hard primitivism’” is not quite as good as “Luke Gibbons points out that Man of Aran exhibits characteristics of Panofsky’s ‘hard primitivism’” but is muchbetter than “Man of Aran is an example of hard primitivism.”

SPECIFIC EXAMPLES

The following excerpt from the MLA website should help you to distinguish between quoting and referencing as well as between original ideas and common knowledge:
[This extract is] from Elaine Tyler May’s “Myths and Realities of the American Family”:
Because women's wages often continue to...