Critical and informative use and acknowledgement of other people’s work, where it is relevant to your own work, is an essential and desirable part of any project and report. Plagiarism is the use, without adequate acknowledgment, of the intellectual work of another person in work submitted for assessment.
A student may not be found to have committed plagiarism where it can be shown that the student has taken all reasonable care to avoid representing the work of others as his or her own.”
Some common forms of plagiarism include:
- Copying directly from another source without presenting it as a quote and providing a reference
- Using ideas from another source without providing a reference
- Using too many words from another source when paraphrasing
- Submitting someone else's work or ideas as your own
- Including a diagram, image or data table from another source without providing a reference
Here are some hints and examples of how to avoid plagiarism:
- Although it is expected that you will read and consult the work of others in a similar area, this should be not be reproduced or otherwise used without correct referencing and/or use of quotation marks.
- Wholesale and extensive reproduction of published work (even if acknowledged) must be avoided. Work presented for assessment must be your own. Verbatim extracts should be avoided as much as possible; you should write in your own words your understanding of the concepts or findings from the published work.
- If you are including verbatim extracts from texts or papers, these should be very minimal and they should be enclosed within double quotes and referenced, e.g. “Chakraborty [10] states in his book that ‘a requirement for ductile tearing of metallic pipes is ...’”. Extensive verbatim reproduction of published work (even within quotation marks) must be avoided as it is a sign of lack of understanding of the concepts, and will have a significant negative impact on the marks for Technical Merit and Evidence of Critical Reasoning.
- References should be numbered sequentially in the dissertation in between square brackets at the point where it is being referred. For example, “Zhang [11] showed that the damage associated with low-velocity impacts significantly reduces the burst pressure of filament wound GRP pipes or A number of papers relating to the mechanical behaviour of subsea pipeline materials have been published [12, 13, 14]”.
- The references should then be listed in the References section, in the following style:
Document type |
How the reference will look |
Conference papers |
[1] Hurst, A., Tischler, G. and Arkalgud, R., (2009). Predicting reservoir characteristics from drilling and hydrocarbon-gas data using advanced computational mathematics (SPE 123785), Offshore Europe Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition 2009, Aberdeen, 8-11 September 2009, pp. 248-257. |
Journal articles |
[2] Hao, J., Neilson, R.D., Ivanovic, A., Li, J., Starkey, A.J., Rodger, A.A. and Davies, M.C.R., (2009). Design of a robot and test procedure for the dynamic testing of anchorages in a geotechnical centrifuge, Geotechnical Testing Journal, 32 (4), pp.325-334. |
Whole book |
[3] Smith, W.F., (2010). Foundations of Materials Science and Engineering. London: McGraw-Hill. |
Chapter in (an electronic) book |
[4] Pells, D.L., (2005). Comprehensive planning for complex projects, In AMA Handbook of Project Management, 2nd ed. New York: AMACOM, pp. 44-59. Available at: http://site.ebrary.com/www/lib/aberdeenuniv/docDetail.action?docID=1012019 1 |
Edited (electronic) book |
[5] Dinsmore, P.C. and Cabanis-Brewin, J., Eds., (2005). AMA Handbook of Project Management , 2nd ed. New York: AMACOM. Available at: http://site.ebrary.com/www/lib/aberdeenuniv/docDetail.action?docID=1012091. |
Patent |
[6] Jordan, T.R. and Kipp, R.M., (2012). Method and apparatus for drilling multiple subsea wells from an offshore platform at a single site, WO2013062736 (A1), (Date issued 5 October 2012). Available at: http://worldwide.espacenet.com (Accessed 8 August 2013). |
Personal communication |
[7] Chandler, H.W., 2013. Email to John Smith - grain differentiation in pastes, 16 June 2013. |
PhD thesis (paper format) |
[8] Lasebikan, B.A., (2011). Mechanical behaviour and stress corrosion cracking of super duplex stainless steel pipes in high pressure and high temperature environment, Thesis (Ph.D.). University of Aberdeen. |
Legislation - Regulations, Acts |
[9] The Offshore Combustion Installations (Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations) 2013. (SI 2013/971). UK. Available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/971/ contents/made (Accessed 24 April 2014). |
Report (paper format) |
[10] William Douglas Cullen Cullen of,Whitekirk Baron, (1990). The public inquiry into the piper alpha disaster, London: H.M.S.O. |
Report (if available electronically) |
[11] Buncefield Major Incident Investigation Board, (2008). The Buncefield Incident 11 December 2005. The final report of the Major Incident Investigation Board. Volume 1, Available at: www.buncefieldinvestigation.gov.uk/reports/volume1.pdf (Accessed 9 September 2013). |
Technical Standard |
[12] British Standards Institution, (2004). Specification for the design and manufacture of site built, vertical, cylindrical, flat-bottomed, above ground, welded, steel tanks for the storage of liquids at ambient temperature and above, BS EN 14015, London: BSI. |
Unpublished material (e.g. lecture notes) |
[13] McCourt, S.M., (2012). How to reference properly, ENG3456: Information Skills for Students, University of Aberdeen. Available at: http://addressformyaberdeen (Accessed 10 August 2013). |
Web page |
[14] Oil & Gas UK, (2010). OSPRAG gives green light for new UK engineering design work on oil well capping and containment, Available at: www.oilandgasuk.co.uk/news/news.cfm/newsid/522 (Accessed 12 December 2013). |
NOTE:
Materials on web-sites are notoriously unreliable, may be inaccurate, only be available for a short time, and there is generally no measure of peer review or accountability. AVOID WEB REFERENCES as much as possible. The exception to this, however, is the, relatively few, web-based peer reviewed journals - these are reliable and can be cited. If you have to include a web-based reference, you must include the full URL and the date the site was visited.
(Source - University of Aberdeen School of Engineering Project Guidelines for Students)