Plagiarism and Referencing

Therefore this section will address: Referencing Within Your Text When you are writing an essay and you are discussing a theory or a piece of work or an idea from someone else you have t

Section 3 Plagiarism and Referencing

Introduction

This section in your Study Skills Manual is going to cover two different, but related areas: plagiarism and referencing When you come to University, one of thetasks that you often perform is reading You will use the reading you do to informyour own opinion and to build arguments that you will write in your essays andexams Section 4 of this manual will give advice on effective reading techniques.However it is absolutely essential to learn how to reference all of the reading that youhave done in your own work, otherwise you could be accused of plagiarism.Furthermore, if you have not referenced the reading and your notes properly then youwill not be able to use it in your work – which is not a good use of the time that youhave spent doing the reading in the first place!

inter-Part 1: Plagiarism

University of Bristol Guidelines

Plagiarism is a term that is often used, and heard, in universities but is often notunderstood Plagiarism occurs when you use other people’s ideas, concepts, words ortheories and either try to pass them off as your own, or do so inadvertently Thisincludes using information you have obtained from the world wide web BristolUniversity’s guidelines define plagiarism as:

University Definition of Plagiarism

"Plagiarism is the presentation of someone else's work as though

it were your own" (JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service 2003)

“Passages quoted or closely paraphrased from other authorsmust be identified as quotations or paraphrases, and the sources

of the quoted or paraphrased material must be acknowledged.Use of unacknowledged sources may be construed asplagiarism.” (Examination Regulations, 2002)

And from the Social Science Student Handbook….

Plagiarism is the presentation of someone else's work as though itwere your own However, it takes several forms, including:

Obtaining an essay, eg from the Internet or another provider, and submitting it as your own work either in part or in full This is

completely unacceptable and will be treated with the utmostseverity

Stealing another student’s work and submitting it as your own work either in colluding with another student to produce work together.

While we expect you to work co-operatively in some of yourseminars and classes, and we are always pleased when studentsenjoy discussing their work with each other, what you submit forassessment must be your own In very particular circumstances,which will be clearly identified, you may be asked to submit groupwork, but even then you will be asked to identify your contribution

If we cannot distinguish your work from that of someone else, wecannot assess it and it is very likely to receive a mark of zero

Copying, or electronically cutting and pasting, sections (ie a whole sentence or more) of someone else’s work, without using quotation marks to clearly mark what is not yours This includes material from

the Internet This is still plagiarism, even if you change a few words

or leave out some of the sentences in a passage Putting quotationmarks round odd sentences and giving the full citation for those willnot prevent any material outside the quotation marks from beingassessed as plagiarism When students are identified as doingthis, they often say that they had made notes, or cut and pasted bits

of sources into a notes file, and then forgot that these wereverbatim rather than their own paraphrase or re-wording of theoriginal This is not an acceptable excuse It is your responsibility tomake sure that you keep track of your notes and material Youshould always keep a record of where notes come from, includingpage numbers where relevant This is part of the study skills weexpect you to develop as an undergraduate at Bristol, and so youcan expect us to treat such plagiarism more severely as youprogress through your studies Ultimately, if you do this in worksubmitted as part of your final assessment, you are very likely toreceive a mark of zero for that unit, something which could affectyour overall degree classification If you are in any doubt about this,please talk to your personal tutor and unit convenors and get advice

on good practice in note taking and the use of quotations

‘Borrowing’ the structure of an argument from another writer and following this too closely, presenting it as your own, without acknowledgement You may not actually copy verbatim sections

from the original, but you are still presenting someone else’s ideasand work as your own Depending on the extent to which you dothis, it may make it difficult to assess the work as your own, andresult in a mark of zero for the unit Again, please ask for help andsupport if you are in any doubt about this.

As you can see the ramifications of plagiarism are substantial: depending on theextent, plagiarism can result in you not being awarded your degree Therefore youhave to take care not to plagiarise, either deliberately or inadvertently

In order to avoid plagiarism, you should:

Suspicion of plagiarism can be aroused through carelessness and is not alwaysdeliberate The University recommends that:

JISC Plagiarism Detection Service

JISC – the Joint Information Systems Committee – is a body which supports furtherand higher education in the use of information and communications technology One

of the services it provides is a plagiarism detection service The University of Bristolhas signed up for this service as an institution, and in signing the University’sregistration form, which makes explicit reference to this service, all students are

1 Give a complete and accurate reference list of allbooks or articles referred to or otherwise used

2 Give references for all quotations, paraphrases ormention of particular passages

3 Never pretend that something is your own work when

it isn't!!!

when you make notes on books etc., you make it absolutely

clear in your notes what is quotation, what is paraphrase

and what is your own comment; you should then be able to

avoid unintentionally quoting or paraphrasing other

people’s work without acknowledgement

automatically brought into the scheme Essays will be checked for plagiarism using

this software.

The Plagiarism Detection Service searches the world wide web and extensivedatabases of reference material and content submitted by other students to identifyany duplication of work The software makes no decisions as to whether a student hasplagiarised, it simply highlights sections of text that have been found in other sources

Part 2: Referencing

Different departments and different Universities use different systems for referencingand each referencing system has a different name Within the School for Policy

Studies, you are REQUIRED to use the Harvard Referencing System The Harvard

system is the system which is used by the majority of social scientists so if, forinstance, you did further studies at different universities you would still use thissystem

Initially, it may seem confusing and you may be used to working with differentsystems, but once you understand this system it will become more straightforward andyou will soon develop the habit of always referencing your sources in this way One

of the things that can make it seem a bit confusing is that you will be referencingdifferent sources and types of material, including books and chapters in books, journalarticles, pamphlets, official government documents, and internet sources, to name but

a few The Harvard system provides a consistent style that is used for each specifictype of material If you do not reference properly, as well as risking accusations ofplagiarism, you will be deducted marks in your essays Therefore in any work thatyou do, from essays to exams to presentations, from now on you are strongly advised

to use this system

The more you apply this system the easier it will become so as well as explaining howthe system works there are a few practical examples at the end of this section for you

to ‘practice’ with

When to Reference

In addition to referencing correctly in your reference list at the end of an essay, thereare also conventions that you must follow when you are referencing other people’swork in the body of your own text So before referencing at the end of your essay isdiscussed, we will look at different examples of referencing within your text i.e youressays Therefore this section will address:

Referencing Within Your Text

When you are writing an essay and you are discussing a theory or a piece of work or

an idea from someone else you have to reference the author’s name This means that

it is not just direct quotations that you have to reference but that everything that it isnot your own work has to be acknowledged Good academic essays will alwaysmention and discuss other people’s theories and ideas, but you will lose marks if you

do not reference them correctly

Single Author

If you are using someone else’s theory you have to: write the name of the theory oridea (sometimes you will put single quotation marks around it but not always) thenwrite, in brackets, the author’s surname and the date of when the publication waswritten

1 Referencing other people’s work:

- Single authors

- Multiple authors of the one text

- Multiple publications by the same author

2 Reference quotations

- Quotes of less than three lines long

- Quotes of over three lines long

An example of this is in the field of male violence, where there is a theory developed

by Liz Kelly known as the ‘continuum of violence’ If you wanted to use this in youressay you would write the words ‘continuum of violence’, put single quotation marksaround it and after this put the author’s surname, Kelly, followed by a comma andthen the date of the publication which is 1988 For example, ‘continuum of violence’(Kelly, 1988) Alternatively if you want to use the authors name in the body of thetext, only the date is bracketed For example, “ in a study by Anderson (1993)”

To summarize, when you use someone else’s theory or idea

in your work:

1 Write the name of the theory or idea and put single quotation marks around it, write the author’s name, and write the date of publication For example,

‘continuum of violence’ (Kelly, 1988).

2 Or use the author’s name in the body of your text and write the author’s name and bracket the publication date after that For example, “….in a study by Kelly (1988)”.

Multiple Authors

If you are referencing a theory that came from more than three authors, you only have

to write the first author’s name plus et al in your actual essay, instead of listing all of the other authors, and then as before write the date of the book Et al is an abbreviation of et allii (and others) which indicates that there was more than one author of the book or article, for example (Roberts et al, 2004) As before you can use

author names in the body of the text and date alone in brackets, for example

“Community Mothers Programme undertaken by Johnson et al (1993)” or “Bennet,Wolin and Reiss (1988) highlight the possible protective value for children ”When including multiple authors in the body of you text you may use et al., as in theexample above or you can write “Johnson and colleagues (1993)” either is acceptable

When you write up the full list of references at the end of your essay you cannot write

et al but you have to write all of the authors’ names (this will be discussed more in the

bibliography section)

To summarise, when there are multiple authors in the theory

or idea/s you are quoting from in your work:

1 Write the first author’s name and add et al, and then

the date of the publication For example (Roberts et al,

2004)

2 Or you can write in the body of your text the first author’s name and add et al, and then write the date

of the publication in brackets For example

“Community Mothers Programme undertaken by

Johnson et al (1993)”.

3 Or you can write in the body of your text the authors’ surnames and put the publication date in brackets For example “Bennet, Wolin and Reiss (1988) highlights… ”

4 In your full list of references at the end of your essay, you must include all the names of the authors in the publication used

was more than one publication in the same year and can identify the specific materialyou are referring to In order to identify which publication came first you list themalphabetically according to the title of the article or book The distinguishing letter

‘a’, ‘b’ or ‘c’ is also be used to identify the publications in the reference list at the end

example (Canavan et al 2000, Foley et al, 2001).

When you are referencing an author’s work where he or she has written about the theory or idea in more than one publication:

2 Write the name of the author and put the publication dates starting with the earliest, separate them with a semi-colon, and distinguish them using ‘a’, ‘b’ or ‘c’ For example, (Blackburn, 1993a; 1993b) Remember to give a full description of them in your list of references

at the end of your essay

Quotations

As you will have noticed from the above examples, because we were not referencingparticular quotations from the authors we did not include page numbers When you

quote other authors you have to include the page number(s) Thus, you would still

have the author’s name and the date but in addition you also write the page number.You would reference in exactly the same way if there was more than one author

following conventions according to the number of authors However there aredifferent conventions about how you write quotations depending on their length.

Less Than Three Lines

If the quotation is less than three lines long – and please note, this is three lines, andnot three sentences long - then it can stay within the body of the text and you wouldjust write it as part of your sentence So you put ‘single quotation marks’ around thequotation and then the author’s name, the date and the page number or numbers all inbrackets When you are writing the page number some people write ‘p’ for page,others use a colon after the date and then give the page number There are not fixedrules about this, but you must be consistent choosing one format and sticking to it

Over Three Lines Long

If the quotation is over three lines long it is written separately so that it stands on itsown You have to indent it and italicise it; because you are italicising and indentingthe quotation you do not have to use quotation marks As before, write the author’sname, date and page number after the quotation

Quotations Within the Text – Less Than Three Lines Long

- Single quotation mark

- Name, Date, Page Numbers (in brackets)

Example

Integral to Kelly’s critique of sociology is that ‘it ignores

feminist research in other areas’ (Kelly, 1988: 3)

Quotations Over Three Lines Long

- Indent

- Italicise

- Name, date, page number (in brackets)

Example

Thus, integral to Kelly’s argument, is that the critique of sociology must

be extended to acknowledge that it often disregards feminist work inother disciplines:

Being a feminist sociologist means that my own discussion of research practice refers directly to my own discipline but many of the points I want to make apply across disciplinary boundaries Part of my criticism of the discussion within sociology is that it ignores feminist research in other areas

(Kelly, 1988: 3)

Shortening a Quotation

If you are quoting from an author and it is a long sentence but you only need part of itthen there is a technique to shorten it You should include an ellipsis (three dots) inthe quotation to show that you have taken part of it out

For example, the above quotation from Kelly can be shortened by removing themiddle section However in order to let the reader know that we have shortened it weinsert an ellipsis in the section which we have removed

Sometimes in removing part of longer section of text to shorten it you will need toinsert a new word to retain the sense of the quotation Most often this is when youremove a Noun and retain a pronoun In this case the word you insert must beenclosed in square brackets and should not be italicised For example, ‘their’ has

been replaced in the following sentence “For inclusion in [Durlak & Wells]

meta-analysis, studies had to have ”

Emphasis

As you may be aware, you can use italicisation when you want to emphasise what youare writing It may be the case that you are using a quotation from an author in whichthey have done this If so, then you must also emphasise the words that the authorhas Thus, you copy the quotation exactly as it is written but after you write thequotation and the author’s name, date and page number you must write, also within

To Shorten A Quotation

Example

Being a feminist sociologist means that my own

discussion of research practice refers directly to my own discipline … Part of my criticism of the discussion within sociology is that it ignores feminist research in other

areas (Kelly, 1988: 3)

the brackets: ‘emphasis in original’ This is so that the reader knows that it is not youbut the original author whom italicised and emphasised this

However if you are quoting an author and you want to emphasise what they are saying

through italicising the quotation (or part of it), then you must write ‘emphasis added’after you write the author’s name, date and page number

Errors

If you are quoting someone but there is an error in the text, you should copy thequotation exactly, even though you know that there is an error What you can do,however, is show the reader that you know it is an error by writing (sic) in bracketsafter the word ‘Sic’ is taken from Latin and means ‘like this’ or ‘thus’

This can also be done for political reasons such as when sexist or racist language isused For instance, if you were quoting from an author who referred to a group ofpeople as ‘he’ when in fact some of the group members may be female then you couldwrite (sic) after ‘he’ in the quotation

Footnotes and Endnotes

Emphasis In Original

Example

‘It is perhaps unsurprising that the women were happy

to take only 75 per cent of the equivalent male wage’

(Smith, 2002: 84, emphasis in original)