Use of Unfair Means

Repetition of Material

Students are not allowed to make use of the same material in different pieces of assessed work. As a rule of thumb, you may not write on the same texts in different assessments, though brief reference to texts discussed elsewhere is permissible. In case of any doubt, consult your tutor, dissertation supervisor, Pathway convenor, or the Assessment Officer. You must state in your work the sources from which the information it contains is derived and the extent to which you have made use of the work of others. You may not submit an essay or dissertation a substantial part of which consists of material that has been submitted for any other Degree or qualification. If you submit material which is not your “own original work” (see below, plagiarism) you are likely to be awarded a failing grade and/or may be referred to the University Discipline Committee.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the great taboo of academic life. You may well already know precisely what it entails and precisely how to avoid it, but many students worry about plagiarism and particularly inadvertent plagiarism, so rather full advice is given here. The following section draws on guidance circulated by the Department of Law, and on the University of Sheffield Student Handbook, to which you are referred for further information.

The School of English does not tolerate plagiarism and will investigate all suspected cases thoroughly. University regulations state that: ‘submitted material must be a candidate’s own original work. Where other material is used, the candidate shall state the source(s) from which the information is derived and the extent to which the candidate has made use of the work of others.’ You are therefore reminded that all material submitted to us for assessment must be your own original work. Where material is based on the work of others this should be properly acknowledged. Failure to do so may be regarded as ‘unfair means’ under University regulations.

Plagiarism is reliance on the work of others without attribution to a source. Usually quotation without attribution is involved, but candidates may also be considered to be plagiarising, even if not using direct quotation, when their work is heavily derivative or paraphrases a secondary source without attribution. Such attribution should be given in the body of an essay, or in a footnote or endnote: inclusion of the source in a bibliography will not be considered adequate acknowledgement. You should always take great care when taking notes to record their source (title of work, page numbers) since, sometimes, other people’s ideas, through repeated copying, may seem to have become your own. Even such unwitting plagiarism cannot be condoned.

Plagiarism is a serious offence in ALL work. The detection of plagiarism will have a very serious effect on examination marks, and can even lead to outright failure of your MA. The normal penalty is a mark of zero for the assessment in question, and the student may also be referred to the University’s Disciplinary Committee.

When assessed work is submitted, all students are understood to be acknowledging the following declaration: ‘All sentences or passages quoted in this paper from other people’s work (with or without trivial changes) have been placed within quotation marks, and specifically acknowledged by reference to author, work and page. I understand that plagiarism — the unacknowledged use of such passages — will be considered grounds for failure in this paper or set of essays, and, if serious, in the degree examination as a whole’.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

You will frequently wish to quote material from books or articles, but this material must always be marked as coming from that source. The key things to remember are as follows:

· You must place quoted material in quotation marks, and include a footnote afterwards giving the author, date of publication, and page number where you found the quote.

· You must also include a final bibliography for each piece of work, giving details of all the books and articles you have quoted.

· It does not make a difference whether you only reproduce a very short section from someone else’s work, or whole pages, without attribution: both are plagiarism.

· The same applies if you have not quoted word for word, but have made a paraphrase with only minor changes: if you do not say where the ideas came from, you are still committing plagiarism.

If any of this seems difficult or you are uncertain, please see links to additional resources for further information:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ssid/unfair-means

Referencing | Library | The University of Sheffield

Departmental referencing styles | Library | The University of Sheffield

http://sheffield.libguides.com/guideliterature/referencing

There are two other situations where you might be submitting material that does not count as your own, original work, and must be avoided. First, collusion involves two or more people working together to produce a piece of work, all or part of which is then submitted by each member of the group as their own individual work. Collusion would also involve cases where one student gets someone else to write or dictate part of an essay; or where one student copies another’s work, with or without the other’s knowledge or consent.

Secondly, it is possible to plagiarise yourself, by submitting the same material more than once for assessment, in this or any other course. You must not attempt to gain credit more than once for the same work. Staff are responsible for minimising the possibility of overlap in their planning of courses and assessments, and consult carefully to make sure that you are safeguarded from this as much as possible; but you also have a responsibility to ensure that you do not present substantially the same material more than once. The Turnitin system will recognize material that you have already submitted as part of an earlier assessment.

Bear in mind that a bibliography appended to an essay or dissertation is not sufficient in itself as it does not indicate the source of particular references and quotations and does not indicate specific intellectual debts. Each time you quote directly from another text, that quotation should be accompanied by a footnote, endnote or parenthetical reference fully indicating the source of the material used. All material must be acknowledged in this way. Where you have borrowed ideas from the work of another, you should indicate this either by means of a note or by an acknowledgement in the body of your text. Failure to indicate quotation or borrowing in this way may be taken as evidence of plagiarism. If you are in any doubt, please consult your MA tutor or dissertation supervisor: you are always better off safe than sorry. For conventions on the presentation of footnotes and endnotes you can consult the MHRA Style Guide.