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Plagiarism and copyright

As a research degree student producing original work, you should be aware of what constitutes academic misconduct and how to avoid it.

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Plagiarism is a specific form of academic misconduct. It means using other people's work without revealing the fact or giving them credit for it. Plagiarism is illegal and a breach of research ethics. Not all acts of plagiarism are infringements of copyright.

Copyright is the law. In Australia, the rights of creators and users of copyright material are enshrined in the Copyright Act 1968 and apply to any work made or created in Australia. It is important that you understand how copyright works as you will be relying on copyright law to protect any work you create and to reproduce other people's work in your research.

As a student of the University, you are responsible for ensuring that you comply with copyright. For more information, please refer to the University's information guide Copying for research (Fair Dealing) (staff and student access only) or the Australian Copyright Council's resources for researchers

How to avoid plagiarism

To write your thesis you will use many sources of information. To avoid plagiarism, ensure that you acknowledge all work and ideas of other people appropriately. UniSA provides a guide to referencing that contains the most common referencing styles used in academic writing.

  • Word-for-word copying of sentences or whole paragraphs from books, articles, theses, lecture notes and other sources without clearly indicating their source and original author
  • Using sentences or paragraphs which are almost like the original text without saying where the information came from
  • Submitting another student's work, either in part or whole, as your own
  • Using someone else's ideas, work or research information without saying where it came from
  • Copying computer files, algorithms or computer code without clearly indicating their origin
  • Submitting work that has been derived, in whole or in part, from another student's work by a process of mechanical transformation such as changing variable names in computer programs.

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