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Education Library: Referencing Guide APA 7th: Plagiarism

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is submitting someone else's work, ideas, or words as your own, irrespective of your intent to deceive.  This means that even unintentional plagiarism through poor notetaking or inattentive referencing may be penalised.

Failure to conform to the expected standards of scholarship (e.g. by not referencing sources) in examinations may affect the mark given to your work -  Cambridge University's statement on plagiarism 

Artificial Intelligence & academic work

If you are using AI in any form within your academic work please familiarise yourself the guidance given by the University regarding misconduct and  plagiarism.

'A student using any unacknowledged content generated by artificial intelligence within a summative assessment as though it is their own work constitutes academic misconduct, unless explicitly stated otherwise in the assessment brief.'  (https://www.plagiarism.admin.cam.ac.uk/what-academic-misconduct/artificial-intelligence)

Useful guides to using AI in academic work:

AI & Education (Guidance form University of Cambridge)

Using AI for Academic Purposes (Wolfson College Academic Skills)

Image credit: Wesley Fryer

Examples of how plagiarism can occur

Examples of plagiarism include copying (using another person's language and/or ideas as if they are a candidate's own), by:

  • quoting verbatim another person's work without due acknowledgement of the source;
  • paraphrasing another person's work by changing some of the words, or the order of the words, without due acknowledgement of the source;
  • using ideas taken from someone else without reference to the originator;
  • cutting and pasting from the Internet to make a pastiche of online sources;
  • submitting someone else's work as part of a candidate's own without identifying clearly who did the work. For example, buying or commissioning work via professional agencies such as 'essay banks' or 'paper mills', or not attributing research contributed by others to a joint project.


    Source: Cambridge University's statement on plagiarism 

Essential rules

There must be no doubt or confusion as to which parts of your work are your own original work and which have been taken from someone else. If you use sources from someone else, whether they be text or illustrations or any other media then these must be referenced indicating the source of the material following the guidance in this Referencing guide:

  • Provide an in-text citation
  • Provide an entry in your reference list at the end of your work
  • Provide full details, including page numbers for direct quotes

On rare occasions you may use a passing reference to a source in text (for example stating your favourite book title as a child), in such cases no reference list entry is needed (making sure that you have not quoted or paraphrased from the source in any way, referred to any aspect of it specifically, or used it to advance an idea). If in doubt it is best to include an in-text citation and entry in the reference list
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Hints to help

  • Do not leave your referencing until the last minute - if you can’t find the source then you can’t use it in your work. Make a note of where a source comes from as soon as you use it (this will also save you a lot of time later on).
  • Whether you use referencing software (such as Zotero) or you compile your references by hand, *always* make a note of where you are taking material from. This includes graphs and tables as these will also need to be acknowledged.
  • If you include someone else’s data in a graph include the reference to the original work.
  • If you wish to collaborate with another person on an activity that may form part of an assignment, you should check with your subject lecturer.

Self plagiarism

If you are referring to your own previous research you will need to reference this to avoid self plagiarism

To do this, cite yourself as the author then reference the work as an unpublished paper, essay or thesis. Please see the guidance for Unpublished & Informally Published Works 

If your work is published (including blog posts, book reviews etc) reference as per the guidance given for the specific format.

Further sources of information

Cambridge University's statement on plagiarism 

Your course handbook on your Moodle Course site will also have more information and you should make sure that you are familiar with this document.

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