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Plagiarism

Plagiarism means taking the ideas or words from other writers without acknowledging them. Along with fabricating results, it is considered to be one of the worst academic sins! When you submit your thesis you must be very confident that all sources are acknowledged; hence the Declaration Statement. This is why you must use a method of notetaking which allows you to easily distinguish your own work from that of others.

Example

The original author wrote:

"[Microsoft's chairman has explained the] company's strategy to make Windows the universal client operating system in the enterprise."

The student wrote:

"The company's strategy is to make Windows the universal client operating system in the enterprise by the Window Open Services Architecture (WOSA) [Semich, 1992]."

The student has copied word for word from the original author's article. Although the student acknowledged the author, he didn't put the excerpt in quotation marks or adequately paraphrase the original wording. This is still not acceptable, and may be considered plagiarism.

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