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Law

Definition of Plagiarism (from the University of Galway Code of Practice)

Plagiarism is a form of academic misconduct. The University of Galway has a policy on academic integrity which defines academic misconduct as "any attempt to gain or help others gain an unfair academic advantage". There are a number of ways to commit academic misconduct. These include (but are not exclusive to) "submitting work as your own for assessment which has, in fact, been done in whole or in part by someone else or submitting work which has been created artificially, e.g., by a machine or through artificial intelligence." Examples of this include:

  • work completed for a learner by a peer, family member or friend
  • work produced, commercially or otherwise, by a third party for a pre-agreed fee (contracted)
  • a work in which the learner has included unreferenced material taken from another source
  • work completed by a ghost writer then submitted as the learner's own work
  • using a previous assignment as submitted by a peer claiming it to be your own work
  • work where there are references that have been falsified to give credibility to the assignment and to show evidence or research

Additionally academic misconduct can include:

  • self-plagiarism where a learner submits work previously submitted for a different assignment without permission/acknowledgement

The above are also included in the National Academic Integrity (NAIN)'s Academic Integrity Guidelines.

The University of Galway Academic Integrity policy lays out a process for handling suspected academic misconduct. Students should familiarize themselves with the policy and its processes.

 

University of Galway

All universities will have specific policies and resources when it comes to plagiarism, although they all boil down to one maxim: don't plagiarize! This page refers to University of Galway's policies and procedures on plagiarism, as well as resources to help avoid plagiarism.

Turnitin

Turnitin is a plagiarism detection software subscribed to by University of Galway. You will likely be asked by your instructors to submit assignments through Turnitin so that they can, in a routine manner, check for originality issues with your papers.

Check out the following video from Turnitin to find out more, particularly about Originality Check.

We'll be developing a video about some misperceptions that students have about Turnitin that we'll post here. One key misunderstanding is what students are being told when they receive a percentage in terms of how much of their paper is similar to other sources. This is not a 'plagiarism percentage' and there is no acceptable percentage of plagiarism: the only acceptable amount of plagiarism in a piece of academic writing is zero! But there are legitimate reasons why a piece of writing would have similarities to other texts, including, most obviously, where a passage has been directly quoted (but done so legitimately, i.e. using quotation marks and appropriate in-text citation).