RESEARCH TIPS
and images, regardless of whether
they are officially published or
not, or whether they are printed or
appear online. There is a common
misconception that you can just
copy, paste and use anything that’s
online, but this isn’t the case.
Breaching copyright unintentionally
is not a valid excuse.
If you want to include other people’s
work in your writing, how do you
protect yourself against accusations of
plagiarism? Fortunately, this is simple:
you tell your readers openly that you’re
using someone else’s content and give
details of the said work.Quoting and paraphrasing
You have two options regarding how
to incorporate other people’s work
into your text: to quote the original
source or to paraphrase it. Quoting
means using a piece of text unalteredP
lagiarism refers to
incorporating someone
else’s work into your
own writing in a way
that’s identical or
substantially similar to the original
material without an appropriate
acknowledgement. This means that
copying a passage verbatim without
putting it inside quotation marks is
plagiarism; not citing your sourcing
or citing them incorrectly also count
as such.
Plagiarism can also be an
infringement of copyright although
the two are not coterminous
(plagiarism is about ethics while
copyright infringement is a
legal term – you can read more
about them at https://writ.rs/
copyrightvsplagiarism. Copyright
applies to many different kinds of
creative works, such as written text70 NOVEMBER 2019 http://www.writers-online.co.ukand placing it inside quotations marks:
Darrell Huff introduces his book
How to Lie with Statistics as follows:
‘This book is a sort of primer in
ways to use statistics to deceive. It
may seem altogether too much like
a manual for swindlers...[but] the
crooks already know these tricks;
honest men must learn them in
self-defence.’You can make modifications to a
quoted passage provided you indicate
to the readers how you’ve done it: to
omit any words, replace them with an
ellipsis; to add your own words, put
them inside square brackets.
Paraphrasing refers to using your
own words to express the passage:Darrell Huff tells his readers that
his book How to Lie with Statistics
is kind of a primer for how you can
use statistics to deceive people. He
admits that it may be taken as a
manual for swindling, but is quick to
point out that the crooks are already
familiar with the different tricks and
that it’s the honest people who need
to learn them for their own good.In both cases you need to cite the
source in order to acknowledge the
creator of the content.
There are different citation styles
depending on the publication
you’re writing for. For instance,
the reference information above
could have appeared in footnotes or
endnotes as opposed to within the
main body of text. You should alwaysStay clear of any chance of accusations of ‘borrowing’ other people’s
work by following these guidelines from research expert Tarja MolesStay clear of any chance of accusations of ‘borrowing’ other people’s
Avoiding
plagiarism
RECORDING REFERENCESUse reference software (eg EndNote, https://endnote.
com, or Mendeley, http://www.mendeley.com) to record your
references or jot down the following in your notebook:- Book: author(s), title, publisher, publication date and place
- Article: author(s), article and journal titles, journal
volume and issue numbers, publication date, page
numbers for the article - Web page: author(s), webpage title, web address,
website host/publisher, publication date (or date of
copyright/when the page was created or updated),
date you accessed the web page (not all these
elements may be available, but make a note of as
many as you can)
Additionally, if you intend to quote or paraphrase a specific
passage, note the page number(s) where it’s located.