Unfair means and plagiarism

Unfair means officers (Divisional Directors of

Learning and Teaching): Carolyn Axtell, Helen

Oakes, Joanne Padmore and Matthew Willett.

Contents

• Why is ‘unfair means’ important?

• What are ‘unfair means’?

• Why students resort to unfair means

• Consequences

• How to avoid this happening

• Detailed examples or unfair means

• Where to get advice

Some reasons why ‘unfair means’ are important

• The PhD must make an original contribution to

knowledge and be entirely your own work

• The PhD award is worth less to everybody if

some people can obtain it by unfair means.

• The University values its reputation for

providing top quality degrees.

• The penalties can be very serious

So what are ‘Unfair means?’

• Plagiarism (either intentional or unintentional): taking ideas or work of another person (including experts and fellow or former students) and presenting them as your own (University of Sheffield Library home page)

• = COPYING WORK AND CLAIMING IT IS YOUR OWN – FROM WEB / BOOKS / OTHER STUDENTS

Unfair means

• Submitting bought or commissioned work (for example from internet sites, essay “banks” or “mills”) is an extremely serious form of plagiarism.

• = BUYING WORK AND CLAIMING IT IS YOUR OWN

Unfair means

• Double submission (or self plagiarism)is resubmitting previously assessed work on one or more occasions (without proper acknowledgement).

• = SUBMITTING THE SAME WORK TWICE

Unfair means

• Collusion is where two or more people work together to produce a piece of work, all or part of which is then submitted by each of them as their own individual work.

• = YOU WORK ON SOMETHING WITH SOMEONE ELSE – BUT CLAIM IT IS ALL YOUR OWN WORK

Unfair means

• Fabrication is submitting work (for example, practical or laboratory work) any part of which is untrue, made up, falsified or fabricated in any way. This is regarded as fraudulent and dishonest.

• = YOU MAKE UP RESULTS e.g. in a thesis

Unfair means

Do not allow other students to copy your work.

Allowing your work to be copied makes you just as guilty of plagiarism as the student who does the copying and just as liable to penalty.

Why do students do this?

• Not clear on what is acceptable

• Have previously used a ‘cut and paste’ method of constructing work from electronic sources

• Think it is the only way they can achieve the appropriate standard because they do not understand the work

• Think it is the only way they can achieve the appropriate standard because they struggle with English

Examples of penalties

• Student buys essay

• Student is expelled from the University and any credits removed.

Examples of penalties

• MSc student paid someone else to produce their dissertation – the dissertation was 90% plagiarised.

• All credits removed from student – no degree awarded – attempt to deceive on student record – probable severe consequences to career in home country

Solutions

1. Refer to these notes and other supporting material

2. Ask for advice from your supervisors - We are here to help you learn.

3. If required, make full use of English language support (and a range of other support services)

More details on avoidance –clear referencing • If you use material that is not your own you

must indicate this as a quotation with “inverted commas”

• It must be the actual quotation as it appears in the source text, with identical wording, spelling, capitalisation and punctuation.

More details• The source must be indicated next to the

quotation.

• E.g. “there are three types of benchmarking” (Brown, 1993, p. 166)

• So – give author, date and page number

• The full reference will be included in the list of references

• Reference everything that is not your own work e.g. case study material

Quotations

• Of course – if too much of the work is in quotations the examiner cannot see what you know!

• You must reference all electronic sources.

Record of references

Keep accurate notes when doing research. Keep a record of sources with full bibliographic details as you use them. You can do this by using a reference management system such as EndNote Online

Good note taking strategies

• Avoid cutting and pasting sections of text, whether referenced or not, from one or more sources when making notes for your literature review.

Good note taking strategies contd.

• Read through the material and then close the article or book. Can you remember what the passage was about?

• If not, reread it. Then make your notes.

Using your own previous work

• You can’t reproduce work you have done in a previous degree.

• If you replicate work across different modules that you have studied, make it clear you have done this.

Secondary referencing

• You only read it in another source …not so good!

• In the bibliography or reference list you need to give the full reference for the source you have read:

• Brown (1993) Employment relations. London: Routledge. In Thompson, P. & McHugh, D. (2002). Work organisations: a critical introduction. (3rd ed.) Basingstoke: Palgrave

Paraphrasing

• putting someone else's ideas into your own words. It does not mean just changing a word here or there, or even a sentence or two if the phrasing of the original is still evident. The paraphrase should clearly be a restatement of the meaning of the original text in your own words.

Paraphrasing

• the statements still need to be referenced, and page numbers should still be given:

• E.g. It is usually assumed that conflict in the workplace is the result of a particular bad situation or occurence, rather than anything more systemic. (Morgan, 1997, p.167).

Use of Turnitin

• Turnitin is a data base of work

• You submit to Turnitin at the same time as you submit a hard copy

• A Turnitin match is one way we detect unfair means (huge electronic data base).

• We do not work to a permissible % match

• See following example

Turnitin

• This example shows that 91% of this work matches other work

• The highest single match is with 69% of this student’s ‘work’.

• Some of this is on the next slide.

So what is plagiarism – ‘poor scholarship’ / ‘patchwriting’?

1. Text A and the student’s work are similar

2. The student’s work is based on A

3. A is incorrectly referenced in the student’s work so it is not clear what is the student’s own work [principle of transparency]

The turnitin report

• The turnitin example above is an

extreme example of plagiarism.

• We do not expect to find any

unattributed ideas or text in a PhD

thesis.

Guidance • New guidance for PhD students on

acceptable parameters of assistance in writing the thesis -Code of Practice info on unfair means is here -http://www.shef.ac.uk/ris/pgr/code/plagiarismNEW info on acceptable parameters of assistance are here: http://www.shef.ac.uk/ris/pgr/code/preparation

Support from Supervisors• Under the guidance the MAXIMUM a supervisor might do is:

• If the meaning of text is or remains unclear, the supervisory team can provide support in correcting grammar and sentence construction in order to ensure that the meaning of text is clear, content and expression of writing;

• The supervisory team can proof-read the text.

• The supervisory team cannot re-write text that changes the meaning of the text

• But a supervisor may choose not to do this.

Advice – look at this

• Departmental Handbook

• University Diary and Handbook

• The Library plagiarism tutorial at-https://librarydevelopment.group.shef.ac.uk/shef-only/info_skills/plagiarism.html

• COMPLETE THIS TUTORIAL.

Other guidance

• http://learningtolearn.group.shef.ac.uk/ref/index.html on referencing.

• tutorial for management students at: https://librarydevelopment.group.shef.ac.uk/shef-only/referencing/management_harvard.html

• On referencing and paraphrasing

If you need general guidance on studying in a different culture…

• The university has information to help you at:

• http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ssid/301/tash/atuni/transition

REMEMBER – DO NOT…

• COPY WORK FROM THE INTERNET OR OTHER THESES OR JOURNAL ARTICLES

• Unless you reference it properly and use small sections

• BUY ESSAYS

• FABRICATE RESULTS

Finally….

• You will be sent a copy of these slides

• Do the exercises in the Library study skills tutorial – slide 28.

• If in doubt – ask your supervisors – we are here to help