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Commerce Law and Management: Postgraduate Resources: Copyright & Plagiarism

This guide is designed to help you access reliable and valid information sources.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is using ideas or the work of another person and presenting it as your own work. It is dishonest, unprofessional and poor scholarship. Examples of this might include cutting and pasting work or closely paraphrasing another’s ideas, writing or design. Collusion is a form of plagiarism where two or more people work together to produce a piece of work but where all or part of the work is submitted as their own work. Group work where students are encouraged to work together to produce a single piece of work for assessment is not collusion. Plagiarism is a form of cheating.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism - A Link to a comprehensive plagiarism Libguide

You might want to consider using reference management software to help you with your referencing. There are several options available including Endnote, Endnote web, Mendeley, Zotero and others. 

For more information on zotero: https://libguides.wits.ac.za/zotero

Referencing Styles

Why should you cite your sources?

Giving credit to the original author by citing sources is the only way to use other people's work without plagiarizing. But there are a number of other reasons to cite sources:

  1. citations are extremely helpful to anyone who wants to find out more about your ideas and where they came from.
  2. not all sources are good or right -- your own ideas may often be more accurate or interesting than those of your sources. Proper citation will keep you from taking the rap for someone else's bad ideas.
  3. citing sources shows the amount of research you've done.
  4. citing sources strengthens your work by lending outside support to your ideas.

From Plagiarism.org