Plagiarism
What is Plagiarism?
The Department of Information Systems considers
plagiarism to be the deliberate passing off of another persons work as
ones own, the quotation of another's writing without quotation marks or its
paraphrasing without full attribution and acknowledgement, and will NOT be
tolerated.
Since so much of the course mark is awarded for work
done outside of our direct control, a great deal of trust is involved. We
therefore view plagiarism in the same way as we do cheating in examinations.
Similar rules apply to all student work such as projects, essays and other
assignments.
Some examples of what we would consider to be
plagiarism are:
- You downloaded material from the
Internet and submitted it as your own work
- You downloaded material from the
Internet and copied whole paragraphs or pages of text into your assignment, but
- You edited them slightly so they fitted in. You might have written other parts
of the assignment yourself, but chunks of it are made up of copied material.
- You found a few articles or books
that really say everything you need. You designed the structure of the
assignment yourself and wrote quite a bit of it. But one or two sections are
almost word-for-word from the articles or books you used. You did this because
they said things in a way you felt you could not improve upon.
- You acquired assignments from
previous years students and used them in the manner described above.
- You re-used material you had
previously submitted without permission.
- Someone else wrote all (or part
of) the assignment or project for you, either as a favour or for some kind of
reward.
How will Plagiarism be detected?
Students submit work electronically to
Vula which is linked to
Turnitin.
Students
are also required to submit a signed copy of the following declaration.
| Declaration 1. I know that plagiarism is wrong.
Plagiarism is to use anothers work and pretend that it is ones
own.
2. I have used the .................... convention for citation
and referencing. Each contribution to, and quotation in, this
essay/report/project/............... from the work(s) of other
people has been attributed, and has been cited and referenced.
3. This essay/report/project/.................. is my own work.
4. I have not allowed, and will not allow, anyone to copy my work
with the intention of passing it off as his or her own work.
5. I acknowledge that copying someone elses assignment or essay,
or part of it, is wrong, and declare that this is my own work.
Signature:.................................... Date
........./.........../..........
Full Name of Student(s):
.................................................................................
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Turnitin will rate the amount of plagiarism detected
in the work.
So what would the consequences of plagiarism be?
If Turnitin rates the amount
of plagiarism below 25%, students normally incur no penalty. Work rated as
having more than 25% but less than 50% plagiarised will be awarded a mark of
zero, and if the Turnitin rating is greater than 50% the student will be sent
to the tribunal after counselling. Punishments (not names) will be published.
In cases where blatant
copying has taken place, the tribunal could suspend or expel a student from the
University. The course coordinator has NO discretion to waive any or all of the
Plagiarism penalties.
What is acceptable to the Department of Information
Systems?
Part of the objective of the course is for you to
find lots of other material. All we ask is that you use it in an ethical,
honest and scholarly way. This requires you to be able to analyse and discuss a
broad selection of the material you found (not just one or two articles), and
that you reference the material you use!
- Acceptable use of another
persons material means that the assignment structure, layout and contents are
all your own work. AND
- You used no more than one
directly quoted paragraph per page, and you referenced the author in the manner
described in the Departmental Writing Guide
- You used ideas, phrases,
concepts, diagrams and statements already stated by others, but you rewrote
them in your own words AND you referenced them
- You have quite a lot of
references on each page, but they are taken from several different sources. (If
they are all from the same source, then you have relied too heavily on that
source!)
The Senate policy
declaration is accessible at
http://www.uct.ac.za/about/policies/
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