This guide provides support for students, supervisors, authors and teaching staff around referencing and plagiarism. It covers:
To find useful sources of information for your work it is important to be able to interpret references correctly. Knowing the difference between a reference to a book chapter or one for a journal article can save you time in getting straight to the resource you need. Cite Them Right Online is an essential guide to referencing which explains the basics of how to reference not just books and journal articles but also online resources, newspaper articles, reports, and more.There are also plenty of examples of different citation styles included e.g. author/date systems such as Harvard and numerical systems such as Vancouver.
We have attempted to collect below guidance for supervisory teams around supporting research students around an awareness of plagiarism, and managing suspected cases of plagiarism. Please note that your department may have additional, or specific guidance or procedures to follow
Learning and Teaching Handbook: Section 8.1.4
"8. The departmental Induction programme should include: ... plagiarism;"
Learning and Teaching Handbook: Section 8.5.2
"2.f. draw the student's attention to plagiarism awareness training available within the University, and to the nature, unacceptability and consequences of plagiarism."
Learning and Teaching Handbook: Section 8.5.2
"Regarding Personal & Skills Development, the supervisory team are responsible for:
9. giving guidance on matters including: the nature of research; the standard expected at the level of study; attendance at generic Doctoral Training Programme or other relevant classes; requisite techniques and methods of work; the presentation of data, footnotes and bibliography; the issue of plagiarism; and other ethical and legal issues as appropriate (e.g. copyright, Data Protection);"
In addition to any department specific guidance, training and procedures, please refer to the following:
To provide guidance to students on tools to help them manage their references, and to help them create bibliographies to a recognised referencing style:
It is worth being aware that most publishers will regularly use plagiarism detection software to verify the originality of papers which are submitted to their journals. Most major publishers are members of Crossref's "similarity Check" service, which uses iThenticate to check against a database of over 155 million content items, including 49 million published academic works.
It is also worth highlighting that many publishers will not accept, or may subsequently retract articles which have been simultaneously, submitted to multiple journals for consideration for publication. They may also take similar action if an author is found to have submitted articles which are deemed to similar to previous articles published. This activity may result in "duplicate" or "redundant" publications, or be seen as "self-plagiarism."
Below are some examples of major publisher's policies and guidance around plagiarism:
