The fact that there is no right of access to valuable work has far wider implications too, past hindering commercial development – it means that holders of significant information – for example, ground breaking medical research – have no obligation at all to share it.  A better system might remove such barriers to innovation whilst ensuring that the copyright owners are appropriately remunerated for their work.

A further way in which we are limited is in the storage of copies of documents to perform searches against.  Jef discusses this below in his interview with Adam Malik (Content Director, Maven Case), in the context of hindering medical research.  A transcript of the interview is provided but you can view the video and related material on the COADEC website here.  For us, this issue places limitations on the way we can develop the software.  Whilst we’re confident our software is good, it could be better, more efficient and more effective for the end user.

Viper’s users benefit from our software in another way aside from plagiarism checking.  We offer students a ‘free option’ allowing them to get a scan of their work in exchange for letting us use the work on websites to help other students revise.  This results in a large bank of coursework that allows students to see examples, for free.  In many developing countries, there simply aren’t funds for education institutions to provide access for their students to expensive journal banks, and these sample essays are a staple part of students’ learning materials.  But a further way in which current laws affect us is through we always have the threat that the Government can take down our site if they suspect we have a significant amount of material that breaches copyright laws.  It could only take a few complaints through the wrong channels from students who have perhaps changed their mind about us using their essay to set this in motion and the Government have the ability to close a project down that benefits thousands of students all over the World who have no access to paid resources.

Our laws are without doubt hindering innovation in terms of our software development and service innovation, as well as in many other ways, some of which are discussed in the interview below.  This is of huge concern to us as a business and something we are trying to be more involved in – two of our team attended the IP review hosted by Consumer Focus and DEAPPG in March last year at Parliament – we also volunteered our company as a case study for the Google/Coadec Copyright report.  We continue to watch the development of the law in this area with interest and cannot say enough about the work done by Coadec to support better legislation and other government policies with the aim of fostering a lasting, sustainable and innovative digital economy for Britain.

Transcript (Video source: Copy and IP fir for the digital world)

Adam: The reason why I mention copyright is, it’s big in the press. There have been bills in many states – SOPA the most vocal one – where copyright legislation supposidly fit for the digital age is trying to be pushed through and ensrined in law, and a lot of people are saying no to that. But I want to ask the question. There is fundamental for a need for copyright – but what’s wrong with the approach thats stopping it?

Jef: Absolutely, there is absolutely a need for copyright law and we are full supporters of it at Coadec, The Coalition For A Digital Economy. But I think the problem is that these laws are very much not fit for a digital age, they’re actually fit to try to restrain the digital age.

Digital inovation is meant that what involves copying and what’s involved in copying has changed. It’s changed from a set of laws that have been the same for all intents and purposes since 1710.

Now we need copyright laws that are going to adapt to the way that people use the Internet so we are full protectors of copyright but we think that the types of things that have been on the table between SOPA, ACTA, much of what’s in the Digital Economy Act and now potentially what’s coming in the Communications Act – the green paper’s due out in the next week or two – are very concerning – the idea of essentially censorship, the idea of blocking, trying to block websites at IP level – there are a number of measures which we think are very concerning.

On the flip side tho, we think that there’s a lot, especially that’s going on in Britain, that’s very encouraging. The Hargreaves reforms – which were proposed by Professor Hargreaves last year, the Government has endorsed them and there’s a current consultation going on about them – are fantastic. They tend to .. if adopted, they will adapt to some of the realities of the digital age

Maybe I should just go into two specifics as what’s wrong. One is an issue of data and text mining. Data and text mining is a hugely important field for scientists. It’s difficult to describe, it’s above my own technological proficiency, but the basics of it are that you take massive sets of data off the thousands of journal articles and by running certain searches through them, you can get new information out of them and these are really important bits of information, information that can help provide medicines, cure diseases and achieve other great breakthroughs.

The problem is that as a technical matter, to run this search you have to make a copy of the journal articles so even if you’ve bought all thousand journal articles, the process of making a copy on your system violates copyright laws. That just doesnt make sense in this day and age.

The second part, more light hearted but also important, is parody. What we see, things like the Newport state of mind video that came out last year,
of JZ and Alesha Keys’ Empire State of Mind, that is artistic, that is great, it’s not just about taking a copy and ripping someone else’s work off, it’s about building on something. The ability to have parodys, that’s not currently allowed under UK law. That’s the sort of thing that the Hargreaves reforms would do and we’re all huge supporters of that. There are many other examples as well.

Adam: Do you think that actually the teams looking at the problem are coming at it from the wrong angle? Because it’s almost like this is an issue that’s created by this wonderful hyper connected digital world that we live in, that’s what’s generating the issue. Isn’t there a need for the people who are the drivers of that connectivity, you know, the facebooks of this world, to actually drive the agenda, and put forward a flip that is workable?

Jef: Absolutely and there has finally started to be evidence of that happening. The problem is that so far the agenda’s largely been driven by by the music and film industries and unfortunately, those businesses, those industries, they have been significantly disrupted by the Internet.

The fact is, to be very blunt, that for about 60 years record labels had an incredibly good model. What they did was they took 11 mediocre songs combined them with one hit and made you buy all 12. Digital innovation has totally destroyed that for them and their profits and their size have gone down significantly. They are fighting back as hard as they can and frankly they’ve lobbied very, very hard to do whatever they can to slow the growth of the Internet and slow the growth and uptake of potential innovations.

Google and facebook and others and we at the Coalition For A Digital Economy representing much smaller businesses are finally trying to get our foot in the door to say no, wait, this isn’t whats good for economy, this isn’t what’s good for innovation.

Adam: You’re right it’s when because when your business model is attacked so much and retarded so much, and actually you cant see a solution back to the old profits, you either do two things: you either accept that and say you either go work at it, you lower costs – or you fight back and theyve got a lot of money to fight with. That’s the disproportionate thing.

Jef: I think thats absolutely right and a lot of what you’ve seen with SOPA and ACTA in this country. The Digital Economy Act it was written by the BPI, the record labels, they have been able to have the resources to come forward and write legislation that favours them.

For a long time digital businesses, both because we’re small and we’re focused on innovating, haven’t really stepped as much into the lobbying world, but now we’ve had to. It’s unfortunate, none of us want to be out there protestoing or fighting parliament, we want to be building great products but as it happens we have to respond and we have to make members of parliament, united states congress and european parliament and elsewhere understand that these proposals arent going to be good for innovation.

Adam: Because there is another danger as well isn’t there because there’s a lot of talk about .. and some of it is hype .. you know we are in an increasingly connected media world, and the chasing of the soundbite that’s going to become pervasive is .. there’s a huge pressure for that.  It’s about this whole tale about personal privacy and cookies and things like that.  I sometimes feel that the agendas driven out of fear rather than the reality and education, because if you teach someone how to create settings and do things – I would rather have the cookies and the personalisation!

Jef: That’s exactly right, I mean on the cookies and privacy issues, it really is about education, people will get scared when they hear that somebody’s tracking what you’re doing online and it can be scary if you don’t know how they use it.  The fact is that cookies by and large, the types of cookies that reputable sites and reputable businesses store on your computer, do not identify you personally and do not break your data to anybody.

They are used for two purposes – one is exactly as you say, to deliver a more tailored browsing experience, and the other is to provide aggregated information to advertisers and that’s very important because to drive more innovation there need to be profits and advertisers help deliver those profits.

I can do more on my website if advertisers will pay to put space on my website.  Delivering aggregated information, the fact that we know that 10,000 of our users have this prefernce vs that, that is something that’s no harm to anybody’s privacy, but without explaining it and without sufficiently teaching people that people do get scared so I couldn’t agree more.  There’s a legislative set of issues but there’s also a huge educational set of issues there.

Adam: Because this is also one of the things you get with more traditional businesses where theyt start hearing this, it can be a little bit of a ‘oo hang on a minute’… which will slow people down in reaching out and creating digital engagement with their customers and businesses as well.  I think is concerning when the soundbites of winning an argument rather than what’s real…

Jef: I think that’s right and you know there’s aother important point on privacy which is a tough one to talk about but it is important and that is, a lot of these issues are being driven by Europe and particularly by Germany.  Germany had a century full of very substational privacy invasions, for lack of a better word, both under the third reich and under soviet influence.  They are very, very sensitive about people’s ability as a culture to keep their data private.  We’re very fortunate here that we didn’t have that 20th century experience and tend to be more open about it – we’re all part of the European Union and we have to be sensitive to everybody’s fears.  And that is all the more reason why, I don’t think we need to say to the Germans no you’re wrong – they have a very legitimate set of concerns.  The issue is to teach them that the kinds of issues at stake here aren’t the kinds of issues that they’re worried about.  Instead it is a significant benefit with very very minimal risk to the users.

Adam: And also , there is transparency – this is a global thing and that is another big issue because if you have completely .. I mean we’re finally talking at a European level so, I mean one of my earlier bug bears about having 20 different things to work on when you’re trying to sell in Europe is being addressed. But again I almost think that this conversation is a world conversation because – when you have someone in Hanoi who can do my website?!

Jef: You know it’s interesting, Baroness Wilcox was the IP minister, and I was in the breakfast with her the other day and she was talking about the progress that’s been made after 40 years of discussion on a unified European patent court, and someone at the breakfast said, well that may have been fine 40 years ago but that’s not what we need now – we need a global patent court, you’re too late!

And it was an interesting point, I mean, any progress is good I suppose, but you’re right these issues are global issues and it does render the discussions around SOPA and the Digital Economy Act and ACTA a little bit ridiculous comments for the simple reason that when you’e talking about one particular jurisdiction - the world functions everywhere.

To send corrections or to get in touch about this article, contact jen [at] scanmyessay.com.  Comments may be left below subject to review.

To tackle plagiarism in the classroom, educators need to:

• be aware of the reasons why plagiarism happens;
• understand different types of plagiarism; and
• integrate plagiarism prevention methods and tools as part of their learning program.

Understand why plagiarism happens

There is no single reason why students plagiarise – and reasons are often multi faceted and complex. Common issues include:

• Looming deadlines, causing them to feel overwhelmed and stressed;
• Misunderstanding as to how ideas and material can be used in work;
• Sloppy note taking and management of course materials, making it difficult to draw clear lines between the student’s work and others’ work;
• Difficulty understanding the course and a feeling of little support or concern about approaching the tutor for more help; and
• Inability to properly use and reference others’ material (see ‘Reasons that drive students to cheat‘ for more perspectives on this topic).

What makes things far more difficult is that there is no universal definition of plagiarism or what is and isn’t acceptable. Back in Feb 2010 a story hit the NY Times about a 17-year-old German whose best-selling novel turned out to include passages lifted from another book.  The story caused an uproar in Germany.  First because of the plagiarism charge, and second because of the way Helene Hegemann, the writer of the novel, defended the charges.  But perhaps the biggest reason why the story hit the headlines was that the book was a finalist for a major book prize – and the selection committee knew about the alleged plagiarism before choosing the novel as a finalist.  This is incredible and on the face of it, begs the question of what message we are sending to students and would-be authors everywhere.

Speaking of the book, Volker Weidermann, jury member and book critic for German Newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine said: “Obviously, it isn’t completely clean but, for me, it doesn’t change my appraisal of the text; I believe it’s part of the concept of the book.”

Author of the novel Hegemann stated herself to be a representative of a different generation, “one that freely mixes and matches from the whirring flood of information across new and old media, to create something new” (New York Times, Feb 12 2010). She stated: “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.”  The lines of plagiarism are blurred and it’s no wonder that students find this topic hard when even those that they look up to struggle to have a firm grasp.

Regardless of the difficulties in defining plagiarism fully, it’s necessary as an educator to understand how and why a student might land themselves in difficulty, and provide the support and resources to help them make the most of the research process without taking undesirable short cuts.

Don’t believe the hype

Sadly, many educators are preoccupied with catching the cheats, viewing the majority of students as wanting to do as little work as possible.  Whilst finding and manipulating data on the Internet is a valuable skill, faced with a wealth of information available online, it’s true that some students feel that the creation of original analysis and interpretation is a lot of effort in comparison to finding something that matches the question set and ‘adapting’ it. Going a step further, for a minority, plagiarising papers can be something of a thrill in itself and even becomes a question of ingenuity.

But through polls, interviews and feedback, we’re confident few students really think this way.  Tight deadlines and a difficulty grasping the course material tend to be the causes of intentional plagiarism, and unintentional plagiarism is far more prevalent.

Rather than focusing on the “cheats”, educators have a far more worthwhile job to do in helping students along the right path.  It’s crucial that students learn the skills they need to help them correctly process the relevant material that they find – skills of note taking, planning, interpretation, analysis and referencing.  The mindset they need to have is that anyone with some basic knowledge can find information on the internet – but the skill is in what they do with that information – and it’s for educators to inculcate that mindset.

Give your students confidence

When a student finds a journal or book that covers their exact topic, they may feel intimidated about the idea of writing something better.  It’s important to reassure students that what interests you most is seeing how they understand the assigned topic, and how they develop their own style and voice.

Further confidence can be instilled by asking students to include their thoughts, opinions and experiences, which give them a unique perspective that may give them a far more interesting angle on the issues than those of the “experts” they found online.  Of course, these are the beginnings of original arguments that are the hallmark of first class writing; and as the course progresses, you teach how these thoughts, opinions and experiences can be presented as original thought that builds on the research of others that they have analysed.

Avoid focusing on grades as an end result

Students often feel a huge amount of pressure from family, friends and tutors to do well in their courses, knowing that failure affects their opportunities for admissions in further education, and, of course, a worthwhile career. A high ranking degree is frequently regarded as a step along the path to success, rather than an active process that is valuable in itself. Students therefore naturally tend to focus on the end results of their academic work, rather than the skills they learn in doing it.  This is a mindset that educators need to work to change.

Educators need to emphasise that students’ grades are irrelevant if they don’t have the skills to show for them. This is especially true when it comes to the exam, where few students will have access to Google and CTRL + C!  Unless they have developed the ability to analyse a question and provide a meaningful response themselves, the exam will prove very difficult to them.  Further, skills learned during their course are directly transferable to the workplace, and students are missing out if they don’t develop these skills which will allow them to perform better and advance in their careers.

Aid planning

Life at university is as much about socialising and partying as it is about studying.  Any educator who doesn’t agree, really needs to get a grip with the reality.  Accept that your students have other, sometimes more interesting, things competing for their time and help them with the planning process.

Looking at an assignment feels like standing at the bottom of a mountain and the hardest thing is taking the first step.  If a student is really distracted with other things, tell them not to start the essay but just to sit down and make a plan of how they will do small chunks of work on it over their available time before their due date, taking into account other commitments, even if these are social commitments.  Don’t try and stop them having fun altogether – just try and get them to find time inbetween.

Rather than setting a final due date, you can further help with the planning process by scheduling stages of progress such as the submission of reading lists/bibliographies, outlines, statements or drafts on specified dates before the final draft is due.  Your responsibility here is to make sure they spend enough time on the work they have been set.  They may not be aware of the extent of work involved and giving a realistic estimate of the time involved will help.  It will also help them organise their time and make the task seem less overwhelming.

Provide tips and tools to avoid plagiarism

Students need to understand how to use other peoples’ material effectively.  Spend some of your time with them doing a practical on plagiarism and using academic materials properly – there are some free plagiarism lesson plans here.

A further significant skill is organising their notes effectively as a lot of plagiarism occurs when students mix up others’ words with their own in their notes.  Suggest practical ways for them to store their notes, such as by using reference management software.

Finally, introduce plagiarism checkers.  Most students we’ve polled do not use plagiarism checkers to get other peoples’ material past their lecturer – contrary to what many educators think – they use them to help avoid accidental plagiarism.   Viper is a free and effective plagiarism checker that can be used as a line of defence by students to check their work before submitting, to avoid accidentally mixing up other peoples’ words with their own.

Let’s kick off with the top 10 reasons students lose marks when they’re writing essays:

1. Misunderstanding the question
2. Straying from the question
3. Writing everything you know about the topic
4. Missing parts of the question or failing to address certain issues raised by the question
5. Not giving enough attention to the most important issues
6. Being descriptive (for example, describing 2 different points of view, rather than comparing them critically)
7. Failing to support views with recognised authority
8. Failing to reach a well-reasoned conclusion
9. Using sources that are unreliable (or biased, without recognising as much)
10. Failing to check spelling, grammar and referencing, losing out on valuable presentation marks (as much as 5% of the overall marks available)

In order to avoid going off on a tangent, you’ll need to decide what the question is asking you to tackle.  Pick out the key words in the question, and they will help you decide what the nature and direction of the question is – or in other words, what you should be focusing on.  You may then begin your essay by making a few general observations, showing some awareness and understanding of the question you’ve been set.

Research

Sketching some sort of analysis of a question is one thing, but at some point you will need to develop you opinions into an argument. This is where you weigh up the possibilities that that the question suggests – you look at different sides to the argument. This way you are able to show the reader that you can deal with different points of view, not just your own, and demonstrate awareness of them. You can then give your own opinion at the end of your essay or incorporate it into parts of your text, but this isn’t always desirable.

There are many different ways of researching information for your essay. For example, if you are a psychology student, you may do some of your own experiments to gather information and support an argument, but the majority of research will be spent reading and taking detailed notes to include in your work.

If you are stuck, it may also be useful to look at past essays discussing similar topics for ideas and inspiration. But remember, not all information on the Internet is valid and some is unreliable, so check information before you incorporate it into your essay.  You should also know that you don’t have to read entire books – you’re trying to construct a clear argument so make sure the research you’re doing is relevant – read the relevant chapters and passages and try to improve your skim reading skills!

Make sure that whilst you are reading, you take down notes including names, page numbers and any information you will need to reference your work. This is very important, as it will be difficult to find this information later on! Also note the book’s title, its author, publisher and date of publication for the bibliography.

Plan

Once you feel you have done enough research to write a good, in depth answer, you must then assess and order your research, forming some sort of structured plan. At this stage, you should have some idea of the structure you want to follow in your essay. Its a good idea to write down a running order of your ideas to follow – and if it doesn’t work, you can try another until you feel your ideas run smoothly. Once you have ordered your ideas into what seems to be a logical pattern of thought (which will then be written as paragraphs for your essay), write down the quotations and sources you will need to support them next to each idea.Before writing your essay, its important to make sure that your essay will be:

• Clear
• Logical
• Persuasive

If you feel there is anything that needs changing – anything that is not clear enough or seems like a weak point, now is the time to change it. Remember that it will be much harder to change the structure mid-way through your essay, so thorough planning is important! And take a deep breath!

Write

By this point the general structure of the essay and your argument should be clear. And it should be obvious that providing you have spent enough time planning, most of the work needed to be done to answer the essay is already completed. However, one very important thing remains!

An introduction and conclusion

In order to create an effective introduction, you will need to do three things:

1. Address the issues that the question implies
2. Give the reader an overview of what is to follow
3. Keep it clear and simple

A conclusion is a way of ‘tying up’ the issues raised in your essay. It should reflect the strength and balance of the points you have argued, so avoid discarding the points you have discussed and coming to a firm definitive opinion, which is the trap many people fall into. Try to summarise the main points you discussed in the body of your essay, and maybe offer a thought-provoking idea – something for the reader to think about afterwards. This always works effectively!

TIP: Don’t introduce new ideas or material into your conclusion.  Think of it as a summary of your main points.

Revise

Being able to write an effective, well-polished essay in a single attempt is rare! Once you have written your essay, this should be considered your first draft. You then need to revise through your points – make sure they are clear and logical. Also remember to thoroughly proofread you work as good use of sentence structure, spelling, punctuation and grammar will gain you points. A good idea is to ask someone else to read through your essay for you – it will allow a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ to see whether your essay reads smoothly, and whether your points are strong and clear. Once you are happy and feel there is nothing more that can be done, all you need to do is print your essay and create your bibliography – which should be fairly straightforward providing you included references in your plan!

Job done.

FINALLY!

Check your work with VIPER, the free plagiarism checker.  It has never been so important to ensure that your work is original and free from accidental plagiarism, but it’s so easy to include other peoples’ words by mixing up your notes and failing to reference properly.  Use Viper to make sure you don’t fall into this trap.

There are two main ways in which you can develop your ideas:

From general to specific

This approach is useful if you are allowed to choose your own research question, which means you will be starting with a more broad area of study.

• Collect all relevant information/research
• Break down your research into smaller, interrelated topics using a elicitation technique
• Create a visual record of this process which will then enable you to identify any areas of uncertainty
• Create a list with possible research questions

From specific to general

This approach is useful if you already have a set research question which you need to develop ideas for.

• Collect call relevant information/research
• Use an elicitation technique to build your research around the original question. Mind mapping is a good way of doing this! (see below)
• Create a visual record of this to identify any gaps in your research
• Create a list of research questions (focusing on your original concept) which will help you to expand and develop ideas to answer your set question

Mind mapping

Mind maps are a great way to present your research visually and get creative, in a similar way to which the brain itself maps ideas and concepts; non-linear and interconnected. They also help to simplify and organise research by separating information using different branches. For most people, mind maps are a much easier way to remember information and develop ideas because they make use of colour, symbols and pictures. They are a great way of getting a general view of your research, and information can easily be added.

• First put any information that you already know on your mind map. This will also give you an idea of how much research you need to do next.
• Add information throughout your research. Annotating your mind map can help you to see how you achieved your end result.
• Use plenty of pictures, symbols and colours – these stimulate creativity
• Be spontaneous – write down any ideas that you can think of. Ideas that may seem weak at first can sometimes be developed into better ones.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming can be done both on your own and with a group. They are a great way to develop ideas as well as create new ones.

The idea of brainstorming is to start with a very simple idea, or preferably a single word which is connected to your research topic. You should then write down anything and everything that relates to this word or concept – as much as you can think of.

Brainstorming doesn’t always have to be written down either – it could also be recorded by tape or on video.

But there are rules!

• Write down everything you can think of, ideas should be uninhibited – anything goes!
• The more ideas the better. Weaker ideas can be developed.
• Build on other people’s ideas – this can also help you to develop/improve your own
• Try to avoid criticism until after you have written down all the ideas

And good luck! Remember that if you are struggling to develop ideas for your essay, you can always speak to your lecturer about the resources and help available to you.

More resources:

These two lenses offer a wide selection of creative problem solving techniques that can really help with generating ideas.

• Creative problem solving techniques
• More creative problem solving techniques

Finally, don’t forget to always scan your finished essay with Viper, the free plagiarism checker.  Viper helps ensure you don’t accidentally plagiarise any material that you didn’t write yourself.

TIP 1: Introducing… Studentbeans!

The ultimate student discount website.  As the website says “Studentbeans.com is an essential part of student life” – and it really is!  Studentbeans.com is the ultimate student discounting website targeting students of all ages and provides hundreds of offers, discounts, entertainment and all things student related! And what’s more – it’s free!

Their ‘offers’ section is really useful if you’re short on cash or want to save up, and has a wide range of the latest money-saver deals and discounts for you to choose from. Their ‘Fun Stuff’ section provides great entertainment and includes:

• A huge range of entertaining and addictive free online games
• A regularly updated picture gallery with some of the funniest pics on the web
• A weird news section
• Student 101 – advice on love, life, student money and more
• A ’10 of the best section’ – funny, interesting lists of everything, ever

Studentbeans also has a useful jobs section with all the latest part time jobs for students specially selected by studentbeans.com, including weekend jobs and summer jobs. There are also regular volunteering opportunities listed here which are a great way to add to your CV.

So don’t miss out and remember to sign up to studentbeans.com for great opportunities, offers, advice and entertainment!

TIP 2: Get to know the difference between  footnotes, references and bibliographies

This is a need-to-know tip that’ll save you a few marks if you get it right.

Why should you reference at all? First of all, it’s useful to know the importance of using referencing in your essay. All academic work will ask you to consider and acknowledge the work of others by using some form of referencing, as this work is someone else’s intellectual property. Using other people’s work without doing this is called plagiarism. By referencing your work, you are making it possible for other people to locate the source you have used.

How you reference very much depends on the task you’ve been asked to complete, but you will be told which referencing systems to use (for example, HARVARD or OXFORD) and if you are unsure you can ask your lecturer/teacher/tutor.

When to reference material:

• When using a direct quotation
• When paraphrasing and summarising some else’s idea/theory/data
• When using specific data – statistics, graphical information (tables, photos and diagrams)

Using quotation marks

If you quote from text substantially (e.g. 2 lines or more), you need to enclose the quote using quotation marks. Longer quotes need to be separated from your text and indented from the left margin (in this case you don’t need to use quotation marks because the source is clearly separated from your text and you identify the author straight afterwards).

If you’re referencing using the Harvard style (which many universities do), this refers to putting the author’s name, the year that the information was published and the page/s the information was printed on in brackets after the quote. The rest of the information is put in the reference list at the end of your work.
E.g. “The quote” (Author’s name, publication date, p.10)

So what’s the difference between footnotes, a bibliography and a references list?

Footnotes are notes (information like name, date, pages and name of book) relating to the text and are placed at the foot of the page. They are mostly used to cite any relevant sources, and are either listed together at the end of a chapter or sometimes at the end of the whole work (sometimes referred to as endnotes). Footnotes are used:

• When you quote directly
• To make cross references
• To state a source
• As an acknowledgement that you have used someone else’s work.

The Oxford/OSCOLA referencing system uses footnotes.  But not all universities/institutions like you to use footnotes, many use the Harvard system instead – so do check with your tutor/lecturer and find out what your institution’s requirements are.

How to use footnotes:

• Footnote numbers should always be in superscript numbers, outside of the punctuation mark. They can sometimes be shown in brackets if necessary, like this(1). In this case they should be placed within the punctuation mark.
• The references should be numbered consecutively (1, 2, 3…)
• Footnote numbers should always be placed at the end of a sentence, or if necessary in the break of a sentence if there is more than one source used.

The bibliography is found at the end of your work and contains full information about the source material you have used.  This includes any background reading you’ve done – so you may not have cited directly from the sources that you include in your bibliography, or included any ideas or concepts from those sources.

If instead you include a list of references, these are JUST the works you’ve quoted from, cited or used ideas/concepts from.  A reference list does not contain background reading.  Your university/institution will usually specify which they expect.

In the referencing/bibliography list, include the author’s name, publication date, the full name of the book or publication and publishing details.

TIP 3: It’s always the season for snowballing!

It can be hard to find quality source material to use in your essays. A good way to start is by following up references in your course materials. These sources are approved by your university and so will always be reliable material to use!

To find the full text of journal materials, have a look at your university’s online library guide and do a search.  If you find the relevant journal, check the references and follow them up. This is referred to as ‘snowballing your reading’ and is a great way to find extra source material.

Many students are aware of what is classed as cheating in their exams or coursework – things such as plagiarising, bringing notes to exams and so on. There are strict guidelines for cheating that all students are made aware of, and its important to recognise that the vast majority of students know that cheating is wrong. So what leads a student to act in ways which they aren’t proud of?

“I’m feeling the pressure…”

There are many students with families who have high expectations about their grade achievements and future career. Therefore some students cheat when feeling the pressure in order to get competitive, marketable credentials to impress their family or friends.

“I did really well at college but when I got to University, I was trying so hard on every assignment, spending whole weekends putting together just a thousand words but I never got more than 60%” says Lindsey (not her real name), a student at New College Nottingham.  ”It was so frustrating as no matter how much effort I put in, it didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere”.  Lindsey admits using a ghost writing service to try and get ahead.  ”I got my work back and for the first time I’d hit the 70 mark.  My Mum and Dad were so proud and I was so happy because it felt like all the money they’d put into my education was worth it.  I also picked up a lot about structuring an essay from looking through the work and although I’ve never used the service again, I’m doing much better”.

Students may also be trying to uphold a job as well as trying to cope with a heavy academic workload – their job may leave no time for sufficient study, therefore they turn to cheating because they feel they can’t cope.  Mark (another NCN student) told us: “I work Saturday and Sunday nights in a bar in town as I can’t afford to live otherwise.  It doesn’t leave much time for writing.  I take any short cuts I can but it’s not because I’m lazy, I just don’t have time for everything, something has to give”.

“I don’t get it…”

Another common reason why students cheat is because they lack understanding of the material or their assignment. It can seem impossible to complete a task if you are unaware of how to go about it.  This can be avoided by using the available resources, such as speaking to your instructor/lecturer or research and writing assistance.

Anna is studying a joint honours course in Psychology and Philosophy at Nottingham University School of Pyschology; she says “I don’t like asking for help as I feel stupid.  Everyone else seems to know what they’re doing.”  Raj (not his real name) is an international student studying law at Nottingham’s Law School (NTU).  ”It’s not the concepts I struggle with”, he told us.  ”As English is my second language, I find it quite hard to follow what the lecturer is saying in class.  If things are explained to me slowly, I pick them straight up.  It’s the language, not the course, but I’m getting better all the time”.

Remember, if in doubt – ask! Tutors and lecturers are paid and it is part of their job to assist students in understanding the assignment they have been set.

Sloppy note taking!

It is often the case that sloppy note taking can lead to accidental plagiarism.  Jen is a former Associate Lecturer with the Open University’s Law School.  ”Now and then you see a chunk of the course material find its way into a student’s work.  The OU give you the course materials electronically and the students paste paragraphs into Word when they’re putting together their draft answer.  When you see those paragraphs, it usually means the student has simply mixed up their writing with their notes.  As I was teaching first years, I was pretty sympathetic to this but it can get students into a lot of trouble”.

Although this form of cheating is unintentional, it is still taken very seriously. This can be avoided by developing simple but effective not taking habits; annotate your notes, making clear other peoples’ quotes along with the details you’ll need to reference it. Many students recognise the obvious forms of cheating, such as copying someone’s work in an exam or not citing a quote, but many students are less certain of how much collaboration is allowed, appropriate paraphrasing and how to correctly cite a source.

“Cheating is part of academic survival”

For a few students, some cheating is seen as acceptable – part of academic survival. By poll, it has been found that the vast majority of students cheat at least once in their academic lives – “so why shouldn’t I, just this once?.”  Lee is doing his International Baccalaureate at Bilborough College.  ”Usually you find the answer to what you’re writing about using Google.  The answer to everything’s on Google.  And you just paste it into Word and then rephrase everything.  Job done.”  When asked if he felt like he’d be earning the marks for those assignments, he said “Everyone does it, it’s not because you couldn’t do it the hard way, but why bother? Everyone cheats, why take the hard option?”.

Cheating offers an ‘easy way out’. Recently, there has been more evidence to suggest that ‘beating the system’ is seen as an admirable academic skill in the student community.  What do you think?

• Setting the same tasks year on year.
• Setting tasks that have only one answer.
• Setting tasks that require students to show concrete knowledge.
• Allowing last minute changes of topics.

Conversely, teachers can reduce the risk of students plagiarising by designing tasks in such a way that does not encourage students to simply find the answers.

Examples of good task design include:

• Requesting the assignment in an alternative format (for example, a poster rather than a report).
• Asking the students to catalogue, critique, plan, defend, justify or rank,
  rather than to explain or describe.
• Giving the students individual or unique data sets or contexts.

Teachers can further build in checks to ensure students are not plagiarising.  Examples of such checks are:

• Requesting that a percentage of the students complete brief vivas each time you set an assignment. The viva is academic version of oral questioning, conducted after the submission of the work, to ensure that the student knows enough about the subject to make it at least plausible that the assignment is their own work.
• Setting a post-hand-in writing task to be done under exam conditions.  This might examine either understanding of the content of the final product or understanding of the process used to make the final product (for example, ‘What were two key resources you used and why were they important?’)
• Asking your students to alter the final assignment under exam conditions (for example, ‘You wrote the programme to do X, how would you change it to do Y?’)
• Making a comparison of the student’s exam performance and assignment performance.

Students can also be required to submit evidence in the process of producing their assignment.  This might include:

• Drafts and planning notes.
• Copies of research papers used.
• Records of supervision meetings.
• Notes from group work.
• Notes from reflective learning – for example, you can ask students to keep a diary recording their reflection on their learning during the course of researching and producing their assignment.

Most of the suggestions on this page were collected from investigations by D Parapadakis (2004), ‘Using IT to combat plagiarism -10 years of success and failures’, in conference proceedings of Plagiarism: Prevention, Practice and Policy, 143-150, and Culwin, F. (2006), ‘Either my students are getting naughtier, or the tools are getting better!’, paper presented at 2nd International Plagiarism Conference, July 2006 (link).  They are reproduced in the highly recommended, excellent booklet produced by Oxford Brookes University, Reduce the risk of plagiarism in just 30 minutes, which you can download for free.

All of Viper’s powerful features…

‘Cobra’ (we quite like that name and may stick with it!) has all of Viper’s powerful features.

It scans the Internet, comparing your document to billions of web pages, reports, journals and e-books.

It also scans the Viper database – an exclusive, restricted access repository of millions of academic documents that no other person or software has access to.

It allows you to add and scan as many documents as you like, of an unlimited size, and make unlimited resubmissions of the same document. You can scan documents in many different formats.

You can add a whole bunch of documents into the queue and leave them running – there’s no need to add scans in one-by-one and wait for your results.

It provides you with a side-by-side comparison showing exactly where plagiarism is found, as well as a downloadable report that you can save and refer back to or share.

New powerful functionality…

‘Cobra’ provides proxy server support, allowing more students and teachers to access it than ever before.  Users previously experiencing firewall problems or university network restrictions will welcome this change.

Reports are new and improved, showing matched plagiarism, click through URLs, words plagiarised and an overall plagiarism percentage.

Plagiarism highlighting and navigation between two documents is improved, making ‘Cobra’ easier to understand and use.

An auto-update feature allows us to update your software without you needing to download and install new versions.  This allows us to give you more features and better functionality without you doing anything more.

The new software uses your bandwidth rather than ours to perform the scan.  This means there will be less queuing and faster scanning for you.

We can’t wait for Cobra – we’ll keep you posted!

Using Viper, you can check an unlimited number of pages as often as you like against the Internet, to make sure nobody has copied your content.  To use this service, simply download the Viper software, and register for a free account.  Then add the files that you want to check to the scanner.

Viper shows you any matches on the web, with the matched URL and a side-by-side comparison.  The ‘filtered PR’ score is the relevant number to pay attention to.  This is where the scanner has taken any possible plagiarism and checked it to see if it actually does match.

Q: What options do I choose when making a scan?

Select the option to scan against the Internet. DO NOT select the option to scan against our database! This is because we store anything you scan for future comparison and so if you scan the same page twice, you’ll get a match to your previous scan.

Q: What type of website files are supported?

Viper’s website check will work provided that the files you are checking have .html or .htm file extensions (i.e. all the pages are called filename.html or filename.htm).  Currently Viper won’t allow you to load in files with .php file extensions.

However, if your website has .php file extensions, you can still check your site by changing the extension to .html.  This can be easily done en mass by downloading a small FREE piece of software from the Internet called AnalogX extension changer (there are loads of bits of software like this, but AnalogX is one that we have tested and are happy with – it’s very easy to use). Download and install the software and then follow these simple steps:

1. Make a copy of your website

2. Select the files and drag them into AnalogX



3. Type “html” (without the quotes) in the box where it says ‘new extension’.

4. Click ‘rename’.

All your files will now have html extensions and can be added to Viper and scanned against the Internet for FREE.

Q: What do other websites charge for this service?

Copyscape charges 5c per search for this service.  Here are some examples of how much you’ll pay for a scan.

• 200 page website = $10 each time you scan
• 500 page website = $25 each time you scan
• 900 page website = $45 each time you scan

Viper allows unlimited scans and you can scan as often as you like for free.

Q: Is my content safe if I scan it through Viper?

Yes, 100% safe.  It is added to our database like any other document for comparison against future scans.  However, we do not use it in any other way – we don’t republish it (there would of course be no point doing so, as your content is already on the Internet and so has no republishing value as Google treats duplicate published content negatively) and if a match is made against a future scan, we only display the percentage, not the original content.

Bibliographic software enables you to store and manage your references electronically and automatically generate bibliographies in a variety of styles. So not only can you keep track of the sources you’ve used, but you can automatically produce a bibliography at the end of your work, without having to copy and paste or retype your source material. Here are some popular reference management tools:

MyReferences

If you’re doing a course with the Open University, you might have come across the MyReferences tool already. The aim of this tool is to help you improve your referencing skills and to prevent plagiarism. The tool helps you to organise your references and to create a bibliography in an approved citation style. The interface is simple interface and ideal for new university students who want to use an automated tool to save them time and ensure that they stay organised.

The MyReferences software enables you to:

• Add references manually or from database searches
• Select a referencing style and create a bibliography enabling you to insert citations and bibliographies/reference lists into assignments.
• Export references to other bibliographic software and share your references in your Open University blog postings, forums and wikis.

RefWorks

A popular reference management tool, RefWorks is a web-based bibliography manager that enables you to:

• import references from online databases
• automatically add references to webpages using the RefGrab-It tool
• create a bibliography in Harvard reference style as well as other popular referencing styles

With RefWorks, you can also store files within a reference (up to 5mb each, with a 100mb limit per user). The Refworks website is US based.

RefWorks has a YouTube channel with a collection of short tutorials that include an advanced video.

Write-N-Cite

Write-N-Cite has been released by RefWorks for Mac computers and it will work with Word 2008 and 2011. It is available to download from the RefWorks ‘Tools’ menu.

EndNote

EndNote is a piece of reference management software that enables you to:

• organise, store and manage your references
• create bibliographies automatically
• directly import references from databases and library catalogues

Papers

Papers is a bibliographic management software available for Mac that can search a number of databases from within it. Papers allows you to search, download and organise source material together with supplementary material, allows you to read your documents full screen, keep notes, cite them in your favorite word processor, share them with your colleagues, and more.

Zotero

Zotero is a free bibliographic software extension for users of the Firefox browser. Features include automatic capture of information from websites, formatted citation export, integration with Microsoft Word.

CiteULike

CiteULike is a free social bookmarking service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. It specialises in academic papers.  CiteULike has (at time of writing) 5,932,972 articles with 3,763 added today so it’s a very good way of finding new source material for your essays and academic work.

Connotea

Connotea is a free reference management service designed specifically for scientists and clinicians. Features include import and exports in RIS format some automatic data capture – generally Connotea works best with scientific sites.  Saving references in Connotea is very quick and easy. You do it by saving a link to a web page for the reference, whether that be the PubMed entry, the publisher’s PDF, or even an Amazon product page for a book. Connotea will, wherever possible, recognise the reference and automatically add in the bibliographic information for you.

Bibsonomy

BibSonomy is a free social bookmarking service enabling exporting in a variety of formats and feeds.  It is a web application of the Knowledge and Data Engineering Group, University of Kassel, Germany.  Both English and German translations of the site are available.

Jabref

JabRef is an open source bibliography reference manager that interfaces with bibsonomy but can also be used stand-alone.  Open Source means that the code is openly available, which means people often contribute to the development of the software meaning it is constantly updated and improved.