Plagiarism

Guidance on Plagiarism¹

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of the work of others as if it were original work. In the context of an examination, this will mean passing off the work of others as a candidate’s own to gain unfair advantage. This is a contravention of university policy and will not be tolerated by the Faculty of History.  When detected, plagiarism incurs serious penalties, which may extend to a failure to obtain a degree.  To avoid such penalties, candidates must leave examiners in no doubt as to which parts of any submission are original, which derivative.

Plagiarism can utilise many sources and media (books, journals, newspapers, websites, unpublished material, illustrations, data, and the work of other students).  It can be distinguished in the following ways:

Self-evidently, historical research and writing are, in varying ways, collaborative.  All historians use original sources, habitually refer to the work of other historians, converse and debate, and hence, in order to demarcate what is original from what is derivative, conventions have developed.  These include:

These necessities should be viewed with common sense.  It is unnecessary, for example, formally to annotate familiar facts – that the battle of Waterloo happened in 1815, for example.  Rather these conventions serve to distinguish what is original in your own work from what is derived from the originality of others.

Plagiarism frequently arises from inadvertence.  In the course of your undergraduate career, you will make many notes on lectures, on various printed texts, even on conversations in supervisions and classes.  In such notes, it is important to distinguish between the ideas and language of others, and your own thoughts and language, or else it can be easy – after the lapse of months or even years – to forget who said what, and to imagine that what is borrowed from others is your own.

Traditionally, supervision essays were unannotated, as , by necessity, are all scripts in three-hour unseen examinations, but word-processing makes it easier  for you to acquire the scholarly habits of furnishing footnotes and bibliographies in weekly essays.   In all circumstances it is imperative to place inverted commas around quotations and to attribute ideas to their original authors in your written text.

The following examples, drawn from Dr. Horrox’s handout, will help to show how these conventions work in practice.

A passage in Rosemary Horrox, “Service”, in Horrox, ed., Fifteenth-Century Attitudes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 61, reads:

Service has some claim to be considered the dominant ethic of the middle ages.  This essay is mainly concerned with the social and political manifestations of service, but it is important to recognize that these rested upon attitudes which were very deeply rooted in medieval society.  That society, to a degree which modern readers sometimes find disconcerting, was based on hierarchy.  Human society, mirroring the whole created universe, was arranged in order of importance.  There is no doubt that this orderliness was found satisfying in itself.  Medieval writing bears witness to a passion for arranging things in order and for resolving all the possible ambiguities and contradictions which might arise.  The minutely detailed lists of precedence to be found in late medieval courtesy books reflect not only a sense that it was socially important to seat people in the right order at the dinner table, but a sheer pleasure in working out the minutiae of relative status

If, in the following manner, you used this passage without attribution and quotation marks, even if the wording is slightly varied, you would be a plagiarist:

Service has some claim to be considered the dominant ethic of the middle ages.  It rested upon attitudes which were very deeply rooted in medieval society.  Society was based on hierarchy and arranged in order of importance.  The lists of precedence to be found in late medieval courtesy books reflect not only a sense that it was socially important to seat people in the right order at the dinner table, but pleasure in working out relative status.

Acknowledging the source in the narrative, but implying that your narrative is independent of the source and, by omitting annotation, making it difficult for your larceny to be detected, is no less plagiarism.  So, you ought not to write:

Horrox has made the point that service has some claim to be considered the dominant ethic of the middle ages.  We can see that it rested upon attitudes which were very deeply rooted in medieval society.  Society was based on hierarchy and arranged in order of importance.  The lists of precedence to be found in late medieval courtesy books reflect not only a sense that it was socially important to seat people in the right order at the dinner table, but pleasure in working out relative status.

The following avoids plagiarism, since it quotes Horrox directly and provides annotation, but is clumsy and tends to imply a selectivity which is, in fact, absent.

As Horrox has said, “Service has some claim to be considered the dominant ethic of the middle ages.”  This is because “society, to a degree which modern readers sometimes find disconcerting, was based on hierarchy.  Human society, mirroring the whole created universe, was arranged in order of importance”.  She further suggests that “this orderliness was found satisfying in itself” and uses the example of late medieval courtesy books to demonstrate this “sheer pleasure in working out the minutiae of relative status”.2

It would better, because more succinct and considered, to write:

Horrox has argued that “service has some claim to be considered the dominant ethic of the middle ages”.  She links this to the contemporary emphasis on hierarchy, as reflected in the courtesy books.3

Still better, because it both understands the source and takes a critical position, would be:

Horrox has argued that “service has some claim to be considered the dominant ethic of the middle ages”, but the discussion which follows is concerned only with male manifestations of service. 4 If we consider the role of women . . .

[1] This document draws upon the University-wide statement on plagiarism, and Dr Rosemary Horrox’s handout, given to first-year undergraduates in a Study Skills session, provided by the Faculty of History.

[2] Rosemary Horrox, “Service”, in Horrox, ed., Fifteenth-Century Attitudes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 61.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.