Telling Tales in the Negligent Office

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

notes

1 Plagiarism at Sydney is defined as “presenting another person's ideas, findings or work as one's own by presenting, copying or reproducing them without due acknowledgement of the source.” A distinction is now made between plagiarism with the “intent to deceive” and negligent plagiarism, “which may not necessarily involve dishonest intent.” A recent amendment to university policy acknowledges some forms of plagiarism as an educational issue:

Plagiarism may also occur when students copy word for word from authors who are regarded as experts not out of dishonesty but out of a fear of paraphrasing or writing in their own words. Such students may choose to use the words of the experts for a variety of reasons including lack of confidence in their ability or comprehension, language difficulties, or diverse cultural backgrounds. Plagiarism which represents poor referencing practice, or which reflects an unwillingness to use one's own words, should be addressed as an educational issue. (See <http://fmweb01.ucc.usyd.edu.au/FMPro?;-db=POL_Main.fp5&-lay=www&-format=/pol/pol_summary.html&DocID=9&-find>)

2 I thank my colleague Dr Richard Stanton for this insight.

3 There is an obvious solution to this problem. Universities could run their own internal English literacy tests which students would be required to pass before admission to the course (see Bretag).