Plagiarism

A pair of colliding galaxies, viewed with the HST. See Astronomy Picture of the Day for credits.

Plagiarism

• In your answers to the questions, you do not simply copy out, exactly or nearly exactly, the parts of the book that relate to each question. You must read the material, grasp its meaning, and then re-express it in your own words. If we find any answer that consists entirely or mainly of material copied from the book, that answer will get zero marks; if several answers are copied, a note will be placed on your student record. (One exception: it is of course impossible to 're-express' numbers. If you want to reproduce, say, a table of planetary distances as part of your answer, you may do so if you give proper credit, i.e. you say explicitly that the material is reproduced from the book. The same is true of diagrams: you may copy a diagram if you clearly state that you have done so.)
• You do not copy your work from someone else, even if he or she has given permission to do so. If we find two (or more) scripts that are too similar for coincidence, both parties will be penalised: we will mark the script on its merits and divide the mark equally among the people who have submitted it (so if three people collaborate on an answer that is worth 36/50, they will each get 12/50). [If you can prove that your work was stolen and copied without your consent, naturally this penalty will not apply; but offhand I confess that I cannot think of any way to do this. Likewise, since we do not believe in telepathy, claims that identical wording was produced independently are unlikely to meet with success.]

The key to avoiding plagiarism is to ask yourself, before inserting a direct quote, "Why am I using the book's words here?" If the answer is "because they're obviously relevant to the question, but I don't really understand them", then don't do it – reread the chapter, and/or ask your tutor. If it's "because I couldn't figure out any other way to say it", again, don't do it, unless the offending phrase is so short or so simple that it's not worth recognising as a quotation. For example, "The smaller the apparent magnitude, the brighter the star looks" probably appears in numerous books, but nobody would claim that this is copying. On the other hand, continuing "just as a lower golf score indicates a better player" would pin the sentence down as a quotation from The Alchemy of the Heavens. If, on the other hand, your answer to the question is "because the exact words are essential to the point I'm trying to make" (e.g. because they illustrate the writing style you wish to criticise or commend, because they are a quotation from someone else and you want to make that point, because they are a precise legal or technical definition, etc.) then you have a case for inserting the quote.

This is an important issue for a number of reasons. Firstly, as mentioned above, copying is just wrong (not to mention illegal). Secondly, it defeats the purpose of the exercise: copying what the book says is neither establishing your ability to learn from written material (a photocopier can copy: this does not mean that it can learn) nor improving your communications skills (again, copying out someone else's beautifully turned phrases does not demonstrate your ability to write your own). Third, it is unfair on other students (if they are penalised for inability to construct a grammatical sentence, and you aren't because you didn't try – you just stole someone else's). Fourth, it will come back to bite you later (this exercise is a fairly minor part of the module, but there will be other modules in which a report or essay carries more weight – so it's best to learn how to do it now!).

For more detailed information on the Department's plagiarism policy, together with advice about how to reference sources, consult the departmental guidelines.