Plagiarism & Referencing
Plagiarism is using the ideas or words of another writer as if they were your own, without any form of acknowledgment. This is more than just another form of cheating. It is literary theft. It is stealing someone else's work.
As a student, part of your university education involves learning how to evaluate information thoughtfully in order to use it to create your own original work. When you use information from articles, books and electronic sources for essays and reports, you will be expected to pay scrupulous attention to acknowledging where your ideas came from. This means more than just documenting the relevant sources. It means acknowledging:
- key ideas (including methods, maps, diagrams, graphs, tables and so on)
- direct quotations
- paraphrased material (putting it in your own words)
- any information that you did not think of yourself.
For more detailed information on how to acknowledge your sources fully and properly click on CDU Library Referencing .
Some tips to avoid plagiarism:
- always cite your source
- ensure that direct quotes use quotation marks or are in block format so that your reader knows where a quote begins and where it ends
- be extra careful with material taken from the Internet
Lecturers are now able to quickly detect plagiarism in an essay through the use of anti-plagiarism software.
For academics, plagiarism is one of the worst possible forms of dishonesty because it strikes at the heart of their work as scholars. Academic and intellectual reputations are built on the development and circulation of ideas which, in turn, depend on the intellectual honesty of practitioners. Without an active commitment to intellectual honesty, scholarship becomes meaningless.
Penalties will be imposed when an allegation of plagiarism is substantiated. For further information please read plagiarism policies on CDU Plagiarism Policy.
Referencing tips for information sources can be found at CDU Library Referencing
Developing information literacy – the future
Well you’ve made it and hopefully come through these workshops feeling much more confident as a researcher. You will be putting the skills you have learned here into practice in your assignment so you might like to get started on this assignment right away.
Please be aware that this is only a brief introduction to information literacy and you’ll need to develop these skills for yourself in future. This might mean understanding the different research emphases in different fields of study. It can be said, that learning to use tools and techniques better is important – but finding the truth of the matter is what really counts.
The next step is now to put all the skills you have learnt into practice. If you require any assistance please contact the Liaison & Information Literacy Coordinator on 08 8946 6193 or email email@example.com (remove the '.nospam' from the address)