Plagiarism

Encyclopedia Britannica defines plagiarism as "the act of taking the writings of another person and passing them off as one's own". You must always state the source when you are using text or data from books, articles, documents, Internet pages or any other source that someone else has created. This is normally done by references directly in your own text (in-text references) and a reference list at the end of the report/thesis.

For more information about the university´s rules, see Cheating and plagiarism. Cheating and plagiarism

How do you avoid plagiarism?

Plagiarism can easily occur without intent when you are in a rush to finish your paper/thesis. Then it is so easy to forget to clearly indicate what parts of the text that are citations and where they are taken from. It must be clear what is your own words and thoughts and what you have taken from other sources!

One way of using other people's text is to paraphrase, i.e. to express with your own words what someone else has written and stating the source in the running text (in-text reference). At the end of the paper more information should be given about the source in the reference list. For more information about how to write in-text references and reference lists, see Writing references. Writing references

Sometimes a longer quotation from a source is justified. When you quote a source it must be worded exactly as the original text. If there are spelling mistakes in the original source you must keep those in your quotation. See guidelines for quoting. Quoting

Tips for avoiding plagiarism

• Keep track of the sources you are using. Have all information about the sources available so that you can write a correct reference list.
• Use a reference management system.
• Mark up the text carefully while you are writing. This is to make sure you know where to insert in-text references.

How is plagiarism detected?

• Teachers/tutors recognize a text when reading. Teachers' (or colleagues') words are used. The plagiarized text is well known.
• A check is made for plagiarism by using plagiarism prevention software for example Urkund. Search engines such as Google can also be used for detecting plagiarism. On suspicion a specific text might be examined against the  thesis/report.