Plagiarism

What is plagiarism?

La Trobe University policy states that:

‘Plagiarism can be defined as reproducing someone else’s words, ideas or findings and presenting them as one’s own without proper acknowledgment.’

Facilitating plagiarism or resubmitting your own work for credit are also considered types of plagiarism:

‘Assisting another person to plagiarise material may be punished as severely as is plagiarism itself. Assisting plagiarism may involve for example, a student lending work, selling or advertising work for sale which is intended for submission for assessment, or which has already been submitted, so that it can be copied and/or handed in by another student as that student’s own work.’

Forms of plagiarism

Plagiarism includes but is not limited to:

  • Copying sentences, paragraphs or other extracts from someone else’s published work (including on the Internet and in software) without acknowledging the source.
  • Paraphrasing someone else’s words without acknowledging the source.
  • Using facts and information derived from a source without acknowledgement.
  • Using ideas directly derived from an identifiable author without acknowledging the source.
  • Producing assignments which should be the student’s own independent work in collaboration with and/or using the work of other people (e.g. a student or tutor). (Academic Integrity Guidelines for Identifying and Avoiding Plagiarism, 2012, p. 1)

Self-plagiarism

Another way of plagiarising is to copy your own work after it has been assessed and then resubmitting it for another assessment.

The Academic Integrity Procedure (2012, p. 5) states that students should ‘not submit their own academic work for assessment when it has already been submitted for assessment at another time (including at another institution), without the express permission of the academic staff member who will assess it’.

It's not just writing

Sources that must be acknowledged are not limited to the printed word. Our policy states that students must ‘declare in their work submitted for assessment all printed, electronic, graphical, artistic work, and other kinds of sources from which they obtain materials or ideas’ (Academic Integrity Procedure, 2012, p. 4).