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Plagiarism is the use of someone’s work without properly acknowledging it. Plagiarism can be defined as:
  • turning in someone else's work as your own
  • copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
  • failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
  • giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
  • changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
  • copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not
Plagiarism can take place through the use of both electronic and physical materials e.g.:
  • books
  • electronic journals
  • issertations
  • newspapers
  • websites
  • videos
  • CDs

Avoiding plagiarism

  • Know how to Paraphrase
  • A paraphrase is a restatement in your own words of someone else's ideas and this still needs to be cited using the recommended referencing style.
  • Know how to Quote
  • When quoting or using the author’s words it is necessary to use inverted commas (“”) directly before and after the quoted text and properly acknowledge the source.
    Consequences of plagiarism
    Plagiarism is also regarded as a criminal offence which may lead to one being expelled from the institution or maybe requested to rewrite the work.

    The University utilises the Harvard Referencing style.
    WHAT IS REFERENCING AND THE HARVARD REFERENCING STYLE?
    • Referencing is a system used in the academic community or a way of acknowledging other people’s work by indicating the source. Harvard is also known as the Author & Date system.
    • Referencing or citing your sources is an important part of academic writing. It lets you acknowledge the ideas or words of others if you use them in your work and helps avoid plagiarism.
    • Referencing your work correctly ensures that you give appropriate credit to the sources and authors that you have used to compile your work.
    • Referencing the sources that you have used for your work demonstrates that you have undertaken wide-ranging research in order to create your work.
    • Referencing your work enables the reader to consult for themselves the same materials that you would have used.
    • The Harvard citation style can vary in minor features such as punctuation, capitalisation, abbreviations, and the use of italics.
    1. Citations in the text of your work should be made following the in-text guidelines given in the example on the guide. Download reference Guide
    2. A complete list of all the citations used in your text will need to be provided at the end of your assignment. This is called your reference list or bibliography and needs to be presented in alphabetical author/originator order.
    Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) defines Information Literacy as knowing when and why you need information, where to find it, how to evaluate, use and communicate in an ethical manner. Information Literacy training equips you with knowledge and skills to identify, retrieve, evaluate, and ethical use and communicate information from various information resources. Importance of information literacy Skills training
    It equips students or researchers with:
    • Skills which will enhance the quality of research skills and expand career opportunities in the information economy.
    • Search strategies to locate and access relevant information, this is the use of the Boolean logic operators which are AND, OR, NOT.
    • Skills to analyse and critically evaluate research findings.
    • Skills to identify the legal and ethical issues relating to the use of information.
    • Skills on citation and referencing, thus acknowledging other people’s work.
    For further information on Information Literacy use the ILS Module available in the library. Download the Information Literacy Skills module
    What is a reference manager? A Reference Manager is a software package that helps you collect and manage citation information and generate formatted bibliographies in a range of styles such as Harvard style, APA style. Examples of reference managers include EndNote, Ref Works, Mendeley, Zotero etc. However, some of these are commercial while Mendeley and Zotero are for free.
    Why do I need a reference manager?
    • It collects both references and full text-articles from databases reducing effort wasted in typing the references manually. Most electronic or online databases such as Emerald, Sage, Google Scholar, JSTOR etc. provide solutions for exporting citations to reference managers.
    • It archives and organises references collectively.
    • It can be integrated to MS word thus enabling you to insert and organise citations in your text.
    • It also allows you to share your references with people in your research community.
    • Organizes your references using your desired Citation style e.g. Harvard, APA, and MLA.
    • It is user-friendly and time saving.
    The free account is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS and includes 1GB of online storage. MENDELEY becomes a personal mini library as you can create numerous folders and store your researched articles separately according to your subjects e.g. Linguistics, Business Management, Animal nutrition. Download L.S.U Mendeley Guide.
    To learn more about Mendeley visit the site click here.
    To download Mendeley onto your machine click here and follow the steps given.