Plagiarism, Reference & Citation

PLAGIARISM, REFERENCE
& CITATION
INTRODUCTION
At University we advance knowledge by building on
the work of other people
Academic integrity – honest, accurate in creating all
academic products
Acknowledgement of other people’s work must be
done
The unit will focus on the legal and ethical aspects
that surrounds the use of information
Learning Outcomes
• To define plagiarism, referencing and citation.
• To explain reasons for citing and referencing
information.
• To explain what constitutes plagiarism and how to
avoid it.
• To clarify on citation and citation styles that are
recommended at the University of Zimbabwe
Plagiarism defined
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to
"plagiarize" means
 to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's
own
 to use (another's production) without crediting the source
 to commit literary theft
 to present as new and original an idea or product derived
from an existing source.
 In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud.
 It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying
about it afterward.
Plagiarism DEFINED CONTINUED
Hexham (2013) defines plagiarism as follows:
Plagiarism is the deliberate attempt to deceive the reader
through the appropriation and representation as one's own the
work and words of others. Academic plagiarism occurs when a
writer repeatedly uses more than four words from a source
without the use of quotation marks and a precise reference to
the original source in a work presented as the author's own
research and scholarship. Continuous paraphrasing without
serious interaction with another person's views,by way or
argument or the addition of new material and insights, is a
form of plagiarism in academic work
Plagiarism
Being dishonest
Lying
Stealing someone’s idea
Cheating
Disrespecting yourself and the academic
community
Copyright infringement
Categories of Plagiarism
Two main broad categories
 Intentional
This is when one fails to acknowledge sources of
information consulted in a write-up knowingly.
 Unintentional
This is when one fails to acknowledge sources of
information consulted in a write-up
unknowingly.
intentional Plagiarism
• Time constraints- too much pressure (time/workload)
• easier to plagiarise than do the work
• poor time management
• pressures to succeed
• lack of language proficiency
• fear of failure
• laziness
• competitiveness
• belief that will not be caught
• perception that offence/consequences not serious
• indifference to the course or topic (unmotivated)
• temptation due to Internet
• Copying a friend’s work
• Buying or borrowing papers
Unintentional (accidental) Plagiarism
Reasons for unintentional Plagiarism
• poor understanding/ignorance of referencing and plagiarism
• “surface” conceptions of learning as reproduction of
knowledge
• failure to understand role of academic tasks in preparing them
for future professional work
• carelessness (in note taking)
• Careless paraphrasing
• Poor documentation
• Quoting excessively
• Failure to use your own voice
Reasons of Plagiarism
A lack of knowledge regarding plagiarism

A lack of knowledge regarding information on
the Internet
A lack of confidence in one’s ability to write a
paper
A lack of knowledge regarding citing sources
Procrastination
Introduction to Information Literacy 10

How to avoid plagiarism
Keep accurate records of the sources you use, noting all the pertinent
information about each source and whether you have quoted from it,
summarized it, paraphrased it, or commented on it.
It is advisable not to “over quote” in one’s paper. Remember the paper
should be made up of one’s own ideas and arguments
Clearly understand how to quote, paraphrase, and summarise
information you borrow and understand how to integrate this
information in your paper
Find out which style guide one should use and use it consistently
Review one’s final written paper looking for changes in one’s writing
style or thinking that might signal that one is using a borrowed source
REFERENCING
Detailed description of the source from which one has
obtained information used in a written piece of work
(Learning Support Services (2004)
It is the procedure used to acknowledge the sources of
information used to complete your own work
Ethics and the laws of copyright require authors to
identify their sources citations within the body of an
assignment and a reference list at the end. The
purpose is to allow the reader to locate the original
material and to examine it. Accuracy and consistency
is very important when citing.
There are various ways of referencing and one has to
be consistent.
References are used to
Enable the reader to locate the sources you have used;
Help support your arguments and provide your work
with credibility;
Show the scope and breadth of your research;
Acknowledge the source of an argument or idea.
Failure to do so could result in a charge of plagiarism.
CITATION
 A way of showing what sources one has

used while giving credit to the original
authors( Learning Support Services, 2004).
• a reference to a published work or
source of information.
• provides identifying information to
enable the reader to locate the source
document.
Introduction to Information Literacy 14
Importance of Citing in Academic Writing
In one’s assignments, research papers or projects, one
usually consults the works of others for several
reasons:
To learn from them
To help formulate your own opinion
To support your ideas
To show what has been done previously on a topic
To show the amount of research you've done
Importance continued..
Whether one quotes from the sources or consult them for
ideas, one needs to cite them for several reasons:
To give credit to the authors or creators of those sources or
ideas
To allow your readers to find and benefit from the exact
sources you used
To let your lecturers know how you arrived at your
conclusions
To protect you from charges of plagiarism and copyright
infringements

What to cite when writing academic work
Anytime one incorporates someone else’s ideas or words into
their assignments or presentations, they must cite them
If one quotes directly from a source, be sure to enter the quote
using quotation marks, and also provide the citation
If one paraphrases or summarises someone’s else’s work, one
must provide a citation
If one reads about a source from within another source, one
still needs to cite the secondary source for example if one
reads about American scholarships on the UZ website, cite
UZ unless if one gets the original copy about the scholarships
What NOT to cite
Certain things do not need to be cited. For example:
One’s own work
Common Knowledge and other factual information
that is easy to confirm (e.g. Cde Robert Mugabe was the
Zimbabwean first president after independence)
Knowledge common to one’s topic and one’s readers
(e.g. in an English literature paper one needs not to cite
this statement: Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet.)
Common expressions (e.g. Don’t wash your dirty linen
in public
HOW TO CITE
Use the title page, not the book cover, for the reference
details. Only include the edition where it is not the
first. A book with no edition statement is most
commonly a first edition
Basic components of a citation
Books: Author (or editor), (Year) Title, Publisher,
Place of publication
Journal Articles: Author, Year, Article Title, Journal
Title, Volume No., Issue No., Pages
Web sites: Author (or Company or Organisation), web
page Title, URL, Date (posted or revisited) Date
retrieved
Basic components of citation
Images: Artist name, Title of the work, Date it was
created, repository (or museum or owner) City or
country of origin, Dimensions of the work, Material or
Medium (such as oil on canvas, marble, found objects)
If the image is in a book you will need full book
citation with the page for the image
If its online, you will need the web citation in addition
to the image number or other identifier
Summary
Citation and Referencing are important facets
of writing. Without which a person would have
committed plagiarism.
Referencing and Citation are practically
married or intertwined.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
REFERENCING AND CITATION
Citation is a specific source that one mentions in
THE BODY OF THE TEXT
References are a list of the sources one has cited.
These are found at THE END OF THE TEXT
Citations Styles
Various citation styles exist.
They convey the same information, only the
presentation of that information differs.
 Whichever citation style one uses, it is important
that one is consistent in its application.
 Different disciplines use different citation styles.
CITATION STYLES
MLA STYLE
APA STYLE
Vancouver STYLE
HARVARD STYLE
MLA
Begin the entry with the author’s last name, followed
by a comma and the rest of the name, as presented in
the work. End this element with a period.
The title of the source should follow the author’s
name. Depending upon the type of source, it should
be listed in italics or quotation marks.
The publisher produces or distributes the source to
the public. If there is more than one publisher, and
they are all relevant to your research, list them in your
citation, separated by a forward slash (/)
When the source has more than one date, it is
sufficient to use the date that is most relevant to your
use of it.
You should be as specific as possible in identifying a
work’s location. An essay in a book, or an article in
journal should include page numbers.
If it is an online source include a URL /DOI
When you cite an online source, include a date of
access on which you accessed the material, since an
online work may change or move at any time.
In text citation
The in-text citation is a brief reference within your text that indicates the source
you consulted. It should properly attribute any ideas, paraphrases, or direct
quotations to your source, and should direct readers to the entry in the list of
works cited. It consists of the author’s name and page number (or just the page
number, if the author is named in the sentence) in parentheses:
e.g Imperialism is “the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating
metropolitan center ruling a distant territory” (Said 9).
or
According to Edward W. Said, imperialism is defined by “the practice, the theory,
and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory”
(9).
Reference
Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. Knopf, 1994.
If there are two authors, include the last name of
each. Example:
(Winks and Kaiser 176)
If there are three or more authors, include the last
name of the first author followed by "et al." without
any intervening punctuation. Example:
(Baldwin et al. 306)
Examples
Lichter, S. Robert, and Stanley Rothman.
Environmental Cancer-A Political Disease?. New
Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1999. eBook Collection. Web. 1
Apr. 2013.
James, Henry. The Ambassadors. Rockville: Serenity,
2009. Print.
Ormerod, Neil, and Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer.
Foundational Theology. Fortress Press, 2015.
Francis, R. Douglas, et al. Destinies: Canadian History
since Confederation. Harcourt, 2000.
Journal, Database
Ferrer, Ada. "Cuba 1898: Rethinking Race, Nation, and
Empire." Radical History Review, vol. 73, Winter 1999,
pp. 22-49.
Wolfensberger, Donald R. “Happy Together?” The

Wilson Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 1, Winter 2009, pp. 63-
66. JSTOR, jstor.org/stable/40262243.

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PLAGIARISM, REFERENCE

A lack of knowledge regarding plagiarism

Introduction to Information Literacy 10

 A way of showing what sources one has

Wolfensberger, Donald R. “Happy Together?” The

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