Faculty of Business Plagiarism Policy
It is unfair to honest students that other students cheat or plagiarise. Charles Sturt University takes a serious view of plagiarism and cheating in any form of assessment, and will take appropriate steps to detect plagiarism including using electronic plagiarism detectors.
Plagiarism consists of a person using the words or ideas of another as if they were his or her own. That is, using, or attempting to use, another person’s work without acknowledgement. The important message here is that if you use the work of another person then it must be acknowledged. The phrase “using another person’s work” includes, but is not limited to:
- using study guide material without acknowledgement;
- paraphrasing the work of another person;
- directly copying any part of another person’s work;
- summarising the work of another person;
- using or developing an idea or theme derived from another person’s work;
- using experimental results obtained from another person’s work; and in the collaborative projects, falsely representing the individual contributions of the collaborating students where individual contributions are to be identified.
Other forms of cheating will also be treated with the utmost seriousness.
The university reserves the right to electronically scan student assignments for the purposes of verifying originality.
Penalties for plagiarism are listed in the Academic Regulations under the Student Academic Misconduct Rule. The penalties include: a caution or reprimand; awarding of zero marks in the assignment, essay, project, test, examination or other work in respect of which academic misconduct has occurred; a fail in the subject; a fine; suspended enrolment; or exclusion from the University.
The Faculty of Business has acquired computer software which can link electronic or scanned assignments to online data to accurately detect plagiarism. The software can also detect situations when students submit assignments which include the work of other students. The software system used by the Faculty is called WriteCycle: Originality Checking. The Faculty reserves the right to require submission of assignments in electronic forms. More details of this software can be found at the following web sites:
Please note that we would much prefer to encourage students to submit assignments which clearly acknowledge sources rather than to detect plagiarism and to impose penalties. Recent penalties applied to students plagiarising have included automatic failure and suspension from the University.
To assist students to understand how to reference and avoid unintentional plagiarism the Charles Sturt University Student Services web site contains guidelines, checklists and further information which can help.