Plagiarism Policy

The Institute treats cases of plagiarism seriously. Plagiarism is the act of using someone else's work with the intent to deceive, and includes copying from books, magazines, on-line texts and other students. There are several ways of going about this. You might decorate your work with some choice expressions or substantial chunks from some other source(s), without making it clear that you have done this. You might copy from work written by fellow students or taken from the internet. In more extreme cases, work might actually be submitted to which the author has contributed nothing at all, something that is entirely the work of another mind.

In academic contexts, the point of the deception is normally to obtain higher marks than you would get for your own unaided efforts. Sometimes the motives can be very complex, but whatever they are, plagiarism is intellectual dishonesty.

There is of course a very real risk of plagiarism being detected, especially when downloading material from the internet, or copying a fellow student's work. The Institute recognises that sometimes, unacceptable degrees of borrowing can occur when a student has not actually intended to engage in unfair practice. For this reason, when a member of the academic staff reads work that he/she suspects is not the unaided work of its supposed author, the issue is normally discussed first with the student(s) involved.

Clearly the most sensible course for a student to pursue, and the course that most students do indeed pursue, is to develop enough academic judgement and self-confidence for them not to be in any danger of such an accusation being made against them. Most students have no wish to gain credit for what they have not contributed to, or gain a qualification that is, even in part, bogus.

Penalties for Plagiarism

If it is decided that on the face of it there is a case of unfair practice, and if the coursework element constitutes more than 20 credits' worth of the overall assessment weighting for the year of study, the Institute will notify the University Authorities. What happens next would be governed by the University's Academic Regulations on Unfair Practice, the most significant part of which is reproduced in the . Where the assessed element is worth 20 credits or less, then the Institute will handle the case wholly internally. In most such cases, the mark for the assessed work will be substantially reduced.