Plagiarism, Collaboration and Cheating
Your attention is drawn to the following statement in the Physics Course Handbook
The Department considers the act of cheating as a serious matter and any incident will be reported to the Head of Department, who will normally refer the case to the University Proctors.
It is unacceptable to:
- cheat during oral or written tests
- copy the work of others and submit as your own
- falsify and/or invent experimental data
Plagiarism (passing off somebody else's words or work as your own) is a form of cheating. The Department subscribes to the University's policy on plagiarism - see http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/plagiarism/ See also the Proctors' notice on the Notice Boards or at http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/proctors/notices/proctorial_notice_plagiarism.pdf
The golden rule to follow in all these areas is:
Examiners must be in no doubt as to which parts of the submitted work are not your own original work and are instead the rightful property of someone else.
Collaboration is an essential part of scientific research work, and of your learning experience. For example, in the practical classes, some experiments are designed to be carried out individually while for others collaboration with other students is required. Discussion among students and with demonstrators and Heads of Class is healthy and encouraged and you may use any help or insights gained in these discussions to improve your experiment, your understanding of the physics and your written report. However, your report must be written by you, following the guidelines on writing reports, and only data collected in your experiment by you (and your partner if it was collective work) should be presented as your own.
In many pieces of work, such as Research Reviews or Projects, you will naturally be drawing on sources like books, journal articles and material found on the web. Here you must use references to attribute your sources of information, including any figures which you copy. Your report should be written in your own words, and if you occasionally need to quote a source verbatim, enclose it in quotes, and give a reference.
David Ward, 18th November 2008