How to avoid plagiarism?
Using what you read
Writing assignments involves bringing together two sources of ideas:
- the ideas of others (discovered in your reading); and
- your own ideas (formed through critical thinking).
There needs to be a balance between your own ideas and the ideas of the writers you have read.
When you use others’ ideas, you can:
- quote (use the writer’s actual words), which requires the least input from you;
- paraphrase (rewrite the writer’s ideas in your own words), which requires more thinking on your part; or
- summarise (rewrite the writer’s ideas in your own words in a shorter form), which achieves the best balance of your thinking and others’ ideas.
You should summarise much more often than you quote or paraphrase because when you summarise, you show that you:
- understand others’ ideas; and
- can synthesise and connect those ideas in order to support your argument.
Referencing
Correct referencing techniques require that you acknowledge the source of your information in two places:
- in the text of your assignment, at the point where you use someone else’s ideas; this is known as in-text referencing or citation
- in a list at the end of your assignment; this is known as a reference list.
The purpose of referencing is:
- to avoid being accused of plagiarism by acknowledging the works of others you have used
- to enable your reader to locate the ideas used and items referred to in your writing.
There are many different referencing styles; those commonly used at UTS are:
In-text referencing
Example of author-prominent citation:
Research by Jones and Xiao (2014) shows that significant analysis has been carried out relating to these specific human resource management initiatives.
Example of information-prominent citation:
There has been a significant amount of data which has shown that these human resource management initiatives have been thoroughly analysed for effectiveness (Jones & Xiao, 2014).
Example of in-text referencing where a direct quotation is cited:
It can be stated that "there has been a significant amount of investigation into the effectiveness of these HR initiatives" (Jones & Xiao, 2014, p. 19) and therefore, it can be argued that…
Common knowledge
You don't need to provide a reference for common knowledge – that is, information shared by many people. It is sometimes difficult to know what is and what is not common knowledge in your field of study. If you read or hear the same information many times from different sources, it is probably common knowledge. Common knowledge usually includes major historical events, famous people and geographic areas that are known about by educated people throughout the world, not just in the country in which they occurred.
If the information is not common knowledge, you should provide a reference. This shows your reader that the idea is held by an expert in the field. It also demonstrates to your lecturer that you have been reading academic texts.
When in doubt, provide a reference.
To recap...
Quoting
To quote correctly, be sure to:
- use quotation marks
- copy the exact words
- give reference details, including the page/paragraph number.
Paraphrasing
To paraphrase correctly, be sure to:
- keep the meaning
- change the word order
- change most of the words
- give reference details.
Summarising
To summarise correctly, be sure to:
- keep the author’s main ideas
- avoid simply copying the author’s words
- make it clear which ideas are yours, and which are the author’s
- give reference details.
Referencing
To in-text reference correctly, be sure to:
- make it clear which ideas are yours, and which are the author’s
- give the author’s last name
- give the year of publication
- give the page/paragraph number (unless you are referring to ideas presented in the publication as a whole).