Plagiarism:

Using someone else’s idea, invention, thought, opinion, suggestions and quote without acknowledging the author and/or the source is called plagiarism. 

In other words, stealing or claiming someone else’s idea invention, thought, opinion, suggestions and quote as yours.

Collusion:

In academic context it means presenting a group’s work as your sole work. It also means copying other student’s work (past or present) in any form and claiming it as yours.

Remember: In some cases, you might be asked to write a report in group, where collusion does not apply BUT if you are asked to work in a group and submit the report individually collusion does apply.

Paraphrasing:

It is rephrasing the words or structure of someone else’s words and using them in your work without acknowledging the author and/or source.

Rule: Paraphrasing is accepted as long as you give proper reference and doesn’t change the actual meaning of the original author.

Rule: You must not paraphrase something that is already given in quotation.

How to avoid plagiarism?

You can very easily avoid plagiarism. A simple rule to follow is to be HONEST at all times while writing your coursework. It may sound too good to be true, if you want to understand what being HONEST means, read the following facts about what is and what is not plagiarism.

1. Exact words:

Using EXACT WORDS from a source without quotation marks (“….”) is considered as plagiarism even when you cite the reference.

If it is just a few EXACT WORDS that you want to use in your coursework, you can write them in quotation marks in your sentence or paragraph along with the reference.

If it is a few exact sentences or a whole paragraph you must write them in quotations in a separate paragraph and indent it along with the reference.

Remember: Whenever you use exact phrases, you must also provide the page number in in-text citation for Books and Journals or wherever it is applicable.

The idea of coining (defining) the terms plagiarism, collusion and paraphrasing is to make you (student or author) to use your own thoughts to make your point and refer to other’s study//thought/idea to support your thought/inference/idea.

Please note: The information given in this page is through the author’s understanding about plagiarism, collusion and paraphrasing and the author doesn’t take any responsibility about the accuracy of the information. 

If you find this article useful, you may also like my book How to write a Coursework? 

Please note: A separate chapter on “Referencing” is written in the book.

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Happy writing
Arun Rajan