SAO Plagiarism PageWhat is Plagiarism and How to Avoid It |
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What is plagiarism?
There is no succinct answer to the question "what is plagiarism?", but essentially plagiarism is taking the work of someone else and presenting it as your own. The real problem can be that people interpret plagiarism in different ways, so that there seem to be "levels" of plagiarism. Swinburne University's Assessment and Appeals document states that,
It boils down to this: any work you submit to SAO must be your own. Forget about needing to perfectly and legally define what can be called "your own work" and whether or not there really is such a thing as an "original idea" in the 21 century – this is all just legal talk! What we mean is that when you sit down and start writing your essay or project (or newsgroup posting for that matter), you should not be copying from another document. If you are paraphrasing (i.e. putting someone else's words into your own), you need to give an exact reference to the source material every time you do so.
Do not "cut and paste" and then re-draft or insert your new words into someone elses sentences! This is not original work. SAO Instructors and Project Supervisors are experienced at detecting such type of submissions. | Do not "cut and paste" and then re-draft or insert your new words into someone elses sentences and then cite the original reference at the end of the sentence or paragraph! This is not original work nor is it an appropriate reference to the source. |
The safest way to avoid plagiarism is to be sure that you don't have any other material around you when you sit down to write! You should read other people's books, papers, websites and so on until you understand the astronomy principles and ideas you wish to convey, and then write it all down in your own words. A key to constructing original work is to survey the literature at depth and not rely on one or two references.
Severe penalties for submitting other peoples work as your own original work will be applied.
Here is an example of what to do and what not to do.
You are asked to submit text as part of an assessment item in your unit. The topic is "what physical processes could cause asymmetric light distributions of spiral galaxies?" You use the NASA ADS abstract server, enter some keywords and find:
1. Original text from Ryder et al (1997)
(taken from Ryder, S. D., et al. 1997, PASA, 14, 81, available at http://www.atnf.csiro.au/pasa/14_1/ryder7421/paper/)
References:
Rix, H.-W., & Zaritsky, D. 1995, ApJ, 447, 82
Ryder, S., et al. 1995, AJ, 109, 1592
Zaritsky, D., & Rix, H.-W. 1997, ApJ, 477,118
Great! This is exactly what you need to help you create your original text submission.
The following is acceptable text that has used the above information, but greatly expanded upon it by using other resources with the author producing original text for submission. It was created by reading, paraphrasing and then combining a variety of resources into original text. It is very different to the text of Ryder et al. (1997).
Original, researched and expanded text
References:
Kuijken, K., & Garcia, I. 2000, In "Galaxy Disks and Disk Galaxies", ASP Conf .Ser., 230, 401
(http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Kuijken/frames.html)
Rix, H.-W., & Zaritsky, D. 1995, ApJ, 447, 82
Ryder, S., et al. 1995, AJ, 109, 1592
Ryder, S. D., Purcell, G., Davis, D., & Andersen, V. 1997, PASA, 14, 81
Struck, C. 1999, Physics Reports, 321, 1
(http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Struck/frames.html)
Zaritsky, D., & Rix, H.-W. 1997, ApJ, 477,118
OK, the text is very different, more expansive than the original, single resource of Ryder et al (1997) with the author clearly making an effort to write the text in their own words, but utilising some of the information from Ryder, S. D., et al. 1997, and finding related information on the topic. If you practise, learn and utilise this technique it is
There is however no short-cut to learning this technique.
You will need to practise writing notes, researching and finding extra, related resources, re-drafting your own words to finally put a variety of ideas and information into your own words. This is the only acceptable way to produce original text for submission into SAO (e.g. essays, projects, NG posts).
If however you choose to cut and paste other peoples text and present it as your own - the following examples will show
Finally, you should seriously ask yourself why you are doing the program. Our instructors and supervisors want to use their time to help you improve your scientific knowledge and communications skills. We do not want to use this time to detect and prosecute for plagiarism.
2. Plagiarism – changing only a few words
References:
Rix, H.-W., & Zaritsky, D. 1995, ApJ, 447, 82
Ryder, S., et al. 1995, AJ, 109, 1592
Zaritsky, D., & Rix, H.-W. 1997, ApJ, 477,118
Changing only a few words like this is not acceptable. In our opinion, this is plagiarism – whether we can prove your "intent to deceive" or not. You've taken large chunks of other person's work (Ryder et al. 1997) and you've not quoted them, although you have included some original references from the Ryder et al. paper. At the very best you would score extremely poorly from an originality point of view.
3. Still plagiarism – minor modification to sentences
References:
Rix, H.-W., & Zaritsky, D. 1995, ApJ, 447, 82
Ryder, S., et al. 1995, AJ, 109, 1592
Zaritsky, D., & Rix, H.-W. 1997, ApJ, 477,118
Here the ordering of a few words has been changed, plus the odd word substituted. This, too, is unacceptable and would still be considered plagiarism. You have used the original sentence structure and done only a few minor modifications: this is still not your own original work.
Here again (below) is what we call original text. It was not derived via "cut and paste" techniques with word substitution.
4. Not plagiarism – appropriate use of references
References:
Kuijken, K., & Garcia, I. 2000, In "Galaxy Disks and Disk Galaxies", ASP Conf .Ser., 230, 401
(http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Kuijken/frames.html)
Rix, H.-W., & Zaritsky, D. 1995, ApJ, 447, 82
Ryder, S., et al. 1995, AJ, 109, 1592
Ryder, S. D., Purcell, G., Davis, D., & Andersen, V. 1997, PASA, 14, 81
Struck, C. 1999, Physics Reports, 321, 1
(http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Struck/frames.html)
Zaritsky, D., & Rix, H.-W. 1997, ApJ, 477,118
In this example the information from the Ryder et al. (1997) paper is used and referenced appropriately, but it has been written in original words. The author has introduced the subject matter and greatly expanded upon information found in the original paper. They have also incorporated a direct quotation (in quotation marks and text in italics) from the paper and clearly referenced it. Other information and references, e.g., Struck (1999) and Kuijken & Garcia (2000), have been used, greatly expanding the content of the work and they have referenced the authors appropriately.
This is what we're looking for!
Some students tell us that they use sentences of other authors because "they
said it so well". That is not a good enough excuse!
While it is reasonable to occasionally quote directly from an author (as long as you use quotation marks, put the text in italics - or at least a different font to your text - and reference the source correctly and directly with the quotation), you need to learn how to explain your new-found knowledge of astronomy in your own words.