Plagiarism means, in relation to work submitted for assessment, the unacknowledged use by a person of the ideas and materials of others in such a manner as to objectively convey the impression that those ideas and materials are his or her own. For example:
- Word-for-word quotation without clear acknowledgement: Directly quoting another person's language, data or illustrations without clear indication that the authorship is not his/her own and without proper acknowledgement of the source;
- Paraphrasing without clear acknowledgement: Paraphrasing the work of others by altering a few words and changing the order of words, or by closely following the structure of their argument, is plagiarism if the source of the work is not acknowledged;
- Inaccurate citation: Not citing correctly according to the conventions of his/her discipline. After using ideas taken from someone else, the student must use the appropriate form to indicate where the idea or the quoted passage comes from.
- Fabricated references: Students should not include anything in their references or bibliography that they have not actually accessed and consulted;
- Self-plagiarism: reusing one’s own ideas, words, data or other material already submitted for formal assessment at HKSYU or another institution, or for publication elsewhere, without acknowledgement, unless expressly permitted by the assessment.
- Translated plagiarism: using translated material from publications in another language in a paper without citing the source.
- Overcitation: summarizing, paraphrasing or quoting directly from other sources too frequently in a piece of work. For example, it is considered over citation to repeat the same citation in every sentence when the source and topic have not changed or to cite several sources with similar ideas. If the submission contains a disproportionate quantity of cited material, such that the student has contributed very little original material to the submission, then the student’s mark should reflect that limited level of contribution.