Researchers must consider plagiarism awareness for the students they teach and supervise, plagiarism awareness for their own work, and how publishers manage plagiarism.  

Plagiarism by students 

All undergraduate students will receive instruction from the library on Plagiarism Awareness within their taught course. Familiarise yourself with the following: 

Students can plagiarise deliberately. Accidental plagiarism can also occur as the result of undeveloped academic skills or lack of familiarity with academic writing practice. Providing help with writing and academic skills can be hugely beneficial in reducing accidental plagiarism. 

Many departments now use Turnitin text matching software as a method of detecting potential plagiarism in students’ work. Digital Education Services maintain Turnitin and offer support and guidance in its use. 

Plagiarism in your own work

Plagiarism is a form of academic misconduct and you should ensure that you are familiar with Imperial's policies on academic misconduct relating to examination offences and research misconduct. When a person copies and reproduces another person’s work, this is usually done with very little thought about, or interpretation of, the work being copied. This means that the ideas, concepts, arguments, methodological processes and so on that are being presented in the original work are unlikely to be truly understood by the person who has copied that work. 

It is essential you know what is considered to be plagiaristic behaviour within your subject field. Pay attention to any local guidance you are given, for example, the accepted use of computer code. It is important to familiarise yourself with ‘common knowledge' within your subject or field, as the misunderstanding of what is and is not common knowledge can lead to plagiarism. 

If you are submitting work for publication, be aware of self-plagiarism. This form of plagiarism (as well as others) is of concern to publishers, so you must be careful when submitting work for publication that you have correctly cited and acknowledged any of your previous work. This also applies when submitting work to several publications, if you submit the same work and this is discovered (it frequently is), you may find that you are not published at all. 

Additional resources: 

Centre for Academic English 

Early Career Research Institute

Postdoc and Fellows Development Centre 

Plagiarism detection by publishers 

There are currently no clear set of standards for plagiarism detection by publishers. Some publishers, research institutions and other organisations have developed guidelines to advise authors in this area, some of which are outlined below.  

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