March 13, 2006
SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT
STATEMENT ON ACADEMIC DISHONESTY
Plagiarism And How To Avoid It
In the University Regulations there is a specific statement concerning academic
dishonesty. That is, when students cheat in written examinations or present someone
else's material for assessment as if it were their own (this is called plagiarism).
“Plagiarism is defined as the unacknowledged use, as one’s own, of work of another person,
whether or not such work has been published.
A candidate shall not engage in plagiarism nor employ nor seek to employ any other unfair
means at an examination or in any other form of work submitted for assessment as part of a
University examination.”
General Regulations, Regulations Governing Conduct at Examinations
Very few students indeed commit such offences, but the Department believes that it is
important that all students understand why academic dishonesty is a matter of such
concern to the University, and why penalties are imposed.
Universities are places of learning in two senses. For students on taught courses,
learning takes place through listening and talking to academic staff, discussion with
peers, reading primary and secondary texts, researching topics for dissertations and
project work, undertaking scientific experiments under supervision and so on. For
research students and academic staff, learning takes the form of original research,
where the outcome will be a contribution to the sum of human knowledge. At whatever
level this learning takes place, however, a common factor is the search for truth, and
this is why an over-riding concern for intellectual honesty pervades all the University's
activities, including the means by which it assesses students' abilities.
Throughout your time at the University you will legitimately gather information from
many sources, but when you present yourself for any examination or assessment, you
are asking the markers to judge what you have made as an individual of the studies
you have undertaken. This judgement will then be carried forward into the outside
world as a means of telling future employers, other universities, financial sponsors,
and others who have an interest in your capabilities that you have undertaken the
academic work required of you by course regulations, that you are capable of
performing at a certain intellectual level, and that you have the skills and attributes
consistent with your range of marks and the level of your award. If you use dishonest
means with the aim of presenting a better academic picture of yourself than you
deserve, you are engaging in a falsehood which may have the severest repercussions.
If you are discovered, which is the most likely outcome, the penalties are severe. If by
some chance you are not discovered, you will spend the rest of your life failing to
measure up to the academic promise indicated by your degree results and other
people's expectations of your abilities.
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Plagiarism
Whole pieces of work can be plagiarised (for example, if a student put his or her name
on another student's essay), or part pieces, where chapters or extracts may be lifted
from other sources without acknowledgement. Sometimes plagiarism happens
inadvertently, where students fail to read instructions about, or do not understand, the
rules governing the presentation of work which require sources to be acknowledged.
In such cases, the problem is usually identified very early in the course and can be put
right through discussion with academic tutors. Deliberate attempts to mislead,
however, are regarded as cheating and are treated very severely by boards of
examiners.
The Department of Sociology adopts a non-tolerance approach to plagiarism.
Assignments with plagiarism will receive severe penalty in mark/grade reduction. In
extreme case of plagiarism, the case may be submitted to the Disciplinary Committee
of the University for further action. Under exceptional situations, the student may be
allowed to re-submit their essay or assignment but with heavy penalty.
The severity of the penalties imposed for plagiarism stem from the University's view
that learning is a search for truth and that falsehood and deception have no place in
this search. The emphasis placed on avoiding plagiarism sometimes worries students,
who believe that they will find it impossible to avoid using someone else's thoughts
when they spend all their time reading critical works, commentaries and other
secondary sources and are required to show in their work that they have studied such
material. Sometimes problems arise from poor working practices, where students
muddle up their own notes with extracts or notes taken from published sources. In the
light of all that has been said above, the question you should ask yourself about any
piece of academic work is 'Will the marker be able to distinguish between my own
ideas and those I have obtained from others?' What markers fundamentally want to
see is that students have read widely round the subject, that the sources used have
been acknowledged, and that the conclusions which arise from the study are the
student's own.
For some more general guidance on plagiarism, as well as the submission of essays,
students are recommended to visit the following website:
http://www.buffalostate.edu/library/docs/asa.pdf
Avoiding Plagiarism
Acknowledging your debt to others
The way to avoid plagiarism it to acknowledge your debt to others and to give them the
credit they deserve for their work. There are two ways to avoid plagiarism.
1.
Quote a passage word-for-word and attribute this to the author.
a) if the passage is more than four lines long it should be indented to make it
stand out from the main body of the text and author's name, date of
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publication and page number must appear at the end of the quotation. A full
reference must be included in your bibliography. For example:
Too often the good intentions of the reformers have been thwarted by the capacity of
interest groups to interpret and adapt would-be reforms so that they fit neatly into existing
patterns of behaviour. On other occasions reforming the rules has led to unforeseen and
undesired changes in the behaviour of those who operate the system. (King 1981: 3)
b) If the passage is less than four lines long it should be incorporated into the
text as shown below. In this case the passage must be in quotation marks
and the date of publication and page number appear in brackets after the
author's name.
As King (1981: 3) states, 'in the past there has been a tendency ... to assume that changes
in the law and legal procedures will result automatically in desired changes in the way the
system operates in practice'.
2.
Paraphrase or summarize the text in your own words. In other words put the
passage in different words to those the author used. No quotation marks are
needed but you need to attribute the ideas by including the author's name, date
of publication and page number.
King (1981: 3) argues that any potential reforms within the criminal justice system can be
subverted and negated by participants in the process.
In all cases the author, date of publication and page number are quoted in the
main body of the text and the full reference is given in the bibliography.
If you want to use a passage from a book or article which is itself a quote from
another book or article, which you do not have access to you should reference in
the following way:
(King 1981: 3, quoted in McConville, Saunders and Leng 1991: 108)
In this case only the book or article you have direct access to, in this case.
McConville, Sanders and Leng, should appear in the bibliography.
The important points to remember are that you can never over-reference and that
plagiarism only occurs if the source is not properly acknowledged.
Citation format
There are different citation formats, and the Department of Sociology suggests that
you follow the ASA (American Sociological Association) citation style.
Citations in the text include the last name (or surname) of the author(s) and year of
publication. Page number should be included when you quote word-to-word, or when
you make references to specific passages from the text.
-
If author’s last name/ surname is in the text, follow it with the publication year in
parentheses
King (1981) argues…
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-
If the author’s last name/ surname is not in the text, enclose the last name and year in
parentheses at the end of the sentence:
This research was done …(King 1981)
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If the page number is to be included it follows the year of publication after a colon:
…King (1981:26)
-
For publications with one to three authors, give all last names/ surnames in the first citation
in the text. Subsequent citations can use the last name/ surname of the first author and et
al.
1st citation:
(McConville, Sanders and Leng 1991)
Subsequent citation: (McConville et al. 1991)
-
For publications with more than three authors, use the first author’s last name/ surname
and et al.:
(Wong et al. 2004)
-
Quotations in the text must begin and end with quotation marks; the citation follows the
end quote mark and precedes the period.
‘…in the past there has been…operates in practice’ (King 1981: 3).
A Bibliography
This is an alphabetical list of all the references you have used in your work, and should
appear at the end of your essay. In your reading you will find that there are several
styles in use. The Sociology Department requests that students use the following
guidelines for all assessed work.
Printed publications
Books with authors:
Weiss, Robert S. 1994. Learning from strangers. New York: The Free Press.
Gubrium, J.F. and J.A. Holstein. 1997. The New Language of Qualitative Method. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Books with no authors – List these alphabetically by the first significant word in the title:
Hong Kong Yearbook. 2004. Hong Kong: HKSAR.
Book chapter(s):
Dewalt, K.M., B.R. Dewalt, with C.B. Wayland. 1998. “Participant observation.” Pp. 259-299 in
Handbook of methods in cultural anthropology, edited by H. Russell Bernard. CA: AltaMira
Press.
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Journal articles:
Hunt, Jennifer. 1984. “The development of rapport through the negotiation of gender in field
work among police.” Human Organization 43(4):283-296.
Magazine articles:
Talcott, Richard. 2006. “Is time on our side?” Astronomy, 34(2), pp. 32-39.
Newspaper articles:
Boseley, Sarah. 2006. “Euthanasia: doctors aid 3,000 deaths: First UK study provokes
furore.” The Guardian, January 18, p. 1.
Internet publications
Sources on the Internet and web pages should be cited in the bibliography as follows:
the name of the author (or organisation), the year the page was created or the article
was written, the title of the page, the full web address and finally the date the web page
was accessed. For example:
Articles:
Graham, L.M. 1998. "The Past Never Vanishes: A Contextual Critique of the Existing
Indian Family Doctrine" American Indian Law Review, 23:1. Retrieved May 25, 1999
Available: LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe, Law Reviews.
Newspapers:
Clary, Mike. 2000. "Vieques Protesters Removed Without Incident." Los Angeles
Times, May 5. Retrieved May 5, 2000.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_vieques000505.htm).
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