DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURES IN ENGLISHUWIMONA

SEPTEMBER 2007

PLAGIARISM
THIS DOCUMENT SUMMARISES EXISTING UNIVERSITY REGULATIONS AND DEPARTMENTAL CODES CONCERNING PLAGIARISM. ALL STUDENTS SHOULD FAMILIARISE THEMSELVES DIRECTLY WITH THOSE REGULATIONS AND CODES.

Plagiarism is a form of intellectual theft, the act of passing off someone elses work as your own. It is one of the most serious academic offences any student can commit, equivalent to cheating in examinations, and always attracts severe punishment. Plagiarism can be committed accidentally (without intent) or deliberately (with intent)but the difference is like that between manslaughter and murder, not like that between right and wrong. Accidental plagiarism is still a serious offence, and lack of intent is not a defence against an accusation of plagiarism. Accidental plagiarism most commonly occurs when a direct quotation from a critical book or article is included by a student in an essay without proper and clear indication of what is quoted and what is not. Even if a reference such as a footnote is provided, failure clearly to mark the quotation opens the door to a charge of plagiarism, and the minimal punishment on conviction is an automatic Fail at 0% for the relevant element of a course, or for the course as a whole, while more serious punishment is entirely possible. But it is easy to avoid, for all that is required is that every quotation you use be properly and clearly identified, either by inverted commas or by other conventions of display (such as indentation etc.), and properly referenced (as in a footnote or endnote). It is every writers responsibility to do this, unfailingly, for every quotation in every piece of work. If you do not know what the proper ways of indicating and referencing quotations are, you must, as a matter of urgency, learn, and absorb that learning as forceful habit. Deliberate plagiarism is the wilful use of unacknowledged writing by others in work submitted for formal grading. How much of an essay is plagiarised does not matter : one unmarked and unacknowledged quotation constitutes plagiarism as much as the submission of an essay that has been bought for money or copied out from a critical book. Deliberate plagiarism constitutes both theft and attempted fraud, as well as, in most cases, breach of copyright. Students convicted of wilful plagiarism will face penalties up to and including expulsion from UWI, and are potentially liable to civil suits ; in the wider market-place, plagiarism is usually treated as a prosecutable offence. Plagiarism is almost always detected. To teachers the stolen passage/s tend to stick out like sore thumbs as very obviously not the work or thought of the student, and we know the critical sources our students use. And it is always prosecuted. Intellectual honesty is the bedrock of what we do, and if we open the way even to the most accidental plagiarism, we open the way to deliberate plagiarism, a basic corruption. It is for this reason that you have been given this document, and are required now to read it : if you plagiarise, you will pay ; dont ever do it.