Section 3
Plagiarism and Referencing
Introduction
This section in your Study Skills Manual is going to cover two different, but inter-related areas: plagiarism and referencing. When you come to University, one of the tasks that you often perform is reading. You will use the reading you do to inform your own opinion and to build arguments that you will write in your essays and exams. 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 you have 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 you will not be able to use it in your work – which is not a good use of the time that you have spent doing the reading in the first place!
Part 1: Plagiarism
University of Bristol Guidelines
Plagiarism is a term that is often used, and heard, in universities but is often not understood. Plagiarism occurs when you use other people’s ideas, concepts, words or theories and either try to pass them off as your own, or do so inadvertently. This includes using information you have obtained from the world wide web. Bristol University’s guidelines define plagiarism as:
And from the Social Science Student Handbook….
Plagiarism is the presentation of someone else's work as though it were 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 utmost severity.
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 your seminars and classes, and we are always pleased when students enjoy discussing their work with each other, what you submit for assessment must be your own. In very particular circumstances, which will be clearly identified, you may be asked to submit group work, but even then you will be asked to identify your contribution. If we cannot distinguish your work from that of someone else, we cannot 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 quotation marks round odd sentences and giving the full citation for those will not prevent any material outside the quotation marks from being assessed as plagiarism. When students are identified as doing this, they often say that they had made notes, or cut and pasted bits of sources into a notes file, and then forgot that these were verbatim rather than their own paraphrase or re-wording of the original. This is not an acceptable excuse. It is your responsibility to make sure that you keep track of your notes and material. You should always keep a record of where notes come from, including page numbers where relevant. This is part of the study skills we expect you to develop as an undergraduate at Bristol, and so you can expect us to treat such plagiarism more severely as you progress through your studies. Ultimately, if you do this in work submitted as part of your final assessment, you are very likely to receive a mark of zero for that unit, something which could affect your 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 ideas and work as your own. Depending on the extent to which you do this, it may make it difficult to assess the work as your own, and result in a mark of zero for the unit. Again, please ask for help and support if you are in any doubt about this.
As you can see the ramifications of plagiarism are substantial: depending on the extent, plagiarism can result in you not being awarded your degree. Therefore you have 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 always deliberate. The University recommends that:
JISC Plagiarism Detection Service
JISC – the Joint Information Systems Committee – is a body which supports further and higher education in the use of information and communications technology. One of the services it provides is a plagiarism detection service. The University of Bristol has signed up for this service as an institution, and in signing the University’s registration form, which makes explicit reference to this service, all students are automatically brought into the scheme. Essays will be checked for plagiarism using this software.
The Plagiarism Detection Service searches the world wide web and extensive databases of reference material and content submitted by other students to identify any duplication of work. The software makes no decisions as to whether a student has plagiarised, 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 referencing and 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, for instance, you did further studies at different universities you would still use this system.
Initially, it may seem confusing and you may be used to working with different systems, but once you understand this system it will become more straightforward and you 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 referencing different sources and types of material, including books and chapters in books, journal articles, pamphlets, official government documents, and internet sources, to name but a few. The Harvard system provides a consistent style that is used for each specific type of material. If you do not reference properly, as well as risking accusations of plagiarism, you will be deducted marks in your essays. Therefore in any work that you 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 how the 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, there are also conventions that you must follow when you are referencing other people’s work in the body of your own text. So before referencing at the end of your essay is discussed, we will look at different examples of referencing within your text i.e. your essays. 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 is not your own work has to be acknowledged. Good academic essays will always mention 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 or idea (sometimes you will put single quotation marks around it but not always) then write, in brackets, the author’s surname and the date of when the publication was written.
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 your essay you would write the words ‘continuum of violence’, put single quotation marks around it and after this put the author’s surname, Kelly, followed by a comma and then 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 the text, 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 the example 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.
Multiple References
When referencing more than one source at the same time work should be ordered by date, earliest first for example (Canavan et al. 2000, Foley et al, 2001).
If you are referencing two or more publications by the same author in the same year, you have to differentiate between them by putting ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ and so on after the date, in order that the reader can distinguish which book or article it is that you referring to, for example, (Blackburn, 1993a; 1993b). This is so that the reader knows that there was more than one publication in the same year and can identify the specific material you are referring to. In order to identify which publication came first you list them alphabetically 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 of your writing.
To summarize -
When you reference from different authors who have written about the same or a similar theory or idea:
1. Write the name of the author with the earliest publication date first and then write the others. For 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.