SAO Plagiarism Page

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,

"Plagiarism is the action or practice of taking and submitting or presenting the thoughts, writings or other work of someone else as though it is your own work."

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

1.  The original text

(taken from Ryder, S. D., et al. 1997, PASA, 14, 81, available at http://www.atnf.csiro.au/pasa/14_1/ryder7421/paper/)

Many spiral galaxies display clear asymmetries in their light distribution (Rix & Zaritsky 1995; Zaritsky & Rix 1996), including some which are apparently quite isolated and non-interacting. Often, studies of the underlying mass distribution of neutral hydrogen reveal much of this asymmetry to be mainly "cosmetic", attributable to (in the case of NGC 1313; Ryder et al. 1995) such factors as the presence of an HI superbubble. However, the recognition of an inherently non-circular and asymmetric population of galaxies would have major ramifications for topics as fundamental as the derivation of disk inclinations, dark matter halos, and the Tully-Fisher relation.

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

2.  Plagiarism – changing only a few words

Many spiral galaxies display clear asymmetries in the distribution of their light (Rix & Zaritsky 1995; Zaritsky & Rix 1996), including some which seem to be quite isolated and non-interacting. Often, studies of the underlying mass distribution of neutral hydrogen show much of this asymmetry to be mostly "cosmetic", attributable to (in the case of NGC 1313, see Ryder et al. 1995) such factors as the presence of an HI superbubble. However, the recognition of an inherently non-circular and asymmetric population of galaxies would have great ramifications for topics as fundamental as the determination of disk inclinations, dark matter halos, and the Tully-Fisher relation.

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

It has been found that many spiral galaxies display asymmetries in the distribution of their light (Rix & Zaritsky 1995; Zaritsky & Rix 1996). Some of these spirals are apparently isolated and non-interacting. Often, observations of the distribution of neutral hydrogen reveal much of this asymmetry to be mainly "cosmetic", attributable to (e.g. NGC 1313, see Ryder et al. 1995) the presence of such structures like HI superbubbles. However, the recognition of a non-circular and asymmetric galaxy population would have major impact for topics as fundamental as the derivation of disk inclinations, dark matter halos, and the Tully-Fisher relation.

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.

4.  Not plagiarism – appropriate use of references

The study of the structure and morphology of spiral galaxies via different wavelengths provides important information about their fundamental properties. Observations of spiral galaxies have shown that many have asymmetric light distributions (Rix & Zaritsky 1995; Zaritsky & Rix 1996). Such light distributions can be caused by interactions or mergers with neighbouring galaxies (Struck 1999; Kuijken & Garcia 2000). Interestingly, some of these asymmetric or distorted examples are apparently isolated which seems to preclude mergers or interactions with nearby galaxies as the source of the asymmetries. Observations of the cold gas distribution (e.g. neutral hydrogen or HI) however provide an important check on whether the asymmetries are of an internal or external nature. For example, in NGC 1313, Ryder et al. (1995) have detected HI 'superbubbles' that are most likely produced by recent supernovae explosions. As well, a recent HI observation (Ryder et al. 1997) of the barred spiral NGC 7421 in a group of galaxies, that has an off-centre optical light distribution, shows an HI 'wake'. This discovery supports the scenario of the galaxy interacting with the intracluster (gaseous) medium of its group. From these cases we can conclude that asymmetric light distributions in spiral galaxies could have many different origins. As stated by Ryder et al. (1997), such a population of asymmetric galaxies "would have great ramifications for topics as fundamental as the determination of disk inclinations, dark matter halos, and the Tully-Fisher relation."

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 you used the Ryder et al. paper, referenced it appropriately, but wrote their ideas in your own words. You have introduced the subject matter and greatly expanded upon information found in the original paper. You have also incorporated a direct quotation (in quotation marks) 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 you 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 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.

More information:

Visit the site Avoiding Plagiarism at Swinburne, and read through the guide Avoiding Plagiarism and Cheating, a guide written specifically for Swinburne students to help them avoid plagiarism and cheating while studying at Swinburne.