This plagiarism finder that my essays will be assessed by is terrifying

pseudo_23

I'm sure i have listed all my references but i didn't keep track as i went!. What kind of penalties apply if they find you lifted a paragraph from a book?.

Red Alert

Do you know where the paragraph is?

parker kent

Did you actually copy a paragraph from a book or did you paraphrase, reference etc?

littlefriend

Type it into a Google search and you may find it through googlebooks so you can then reference it correctly

conor.hogan.2

Try googling it, if it is not on google books or somewhere online and you cant remember what book it was from just throw in a random reference.

I have thrown in a few random references when I was editing essays where I saw a paragraph that looked suspect where a reference was lost or i forgot etc.

Not ideal but better then claiming as your own.

WeeBushy

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Try googling it, if it is not on google books or somewhere online and you cant remember what book it was from just throw in a random reference.

I have thrown in a few random references when I was editing essays where I saw a paragraph that looked suspect where a reference was lost or i forgot etc.

Not ideal but better then claiming as your own.

You probably will get away with it. They don't check every single reference of every single essay. But claiming it as your own is no better imo.

parker kent

WeeBushy wrote: »

You probably will get away with it. They don't check every single reference of every single essay. But claiming it as your own is no better imo.

It is far worse surely? The purpose of Safe Assign on Blackboard is to identify plagiarism. Not every lecturer uses it to the same extent, but they could easily spot it.

keepkeyyellow

My house mate got done for plagarism in first year for film studies, the thing is he just didn't know what citing is being a med student and taking it as an elective. So the essay just didn't count toward his final grade.

WeeBushy

parker kent wrote: »

It is far worse surely? The purpose of Safe Assign on Blackboard is to identify plagiarism. Not every lecturer uses it to the same extent, but they could easily spot it.

In terms of getting caught, then yes I'd agree with you. But in a more academic moral sense, accrediting someone's work to a fictitious/made up person isn't better than claiming it as your own imo.

conor.hogan.2

Obviously you should do neither.
But on the day or day before an essay or report or whatever is due and you spot a missing footnote that you can not track up through google and all the resources you have used are back in various libraries then it is the better thing to do rather than claim it as your own opinion.

It is not right, but once it is not for your phd or some work which will get published it is harming no-one and just helps make sure you dont get failed or worse for plagiarizing when you clearly did not.

WeeBushy

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Obviously you should do neither.
But on the day or day before an essay or report or whatever is due and you spot a missing footnote that you can not track up through google and all the resources you have used are back in various libraries then it is the better thing to do rather than claim it as your own opinion.

It is not right, but once it is not for your phd or some work which will get published it is harming no-one and just helps make sure you dont get failed or worse for plagiarizing when you clearly did not.

Fair enough, I'd actually probably agree with that.

Red Alert

I'd add also that your essay will not be assessed by SafeAssign. SA will provide a numerical score and a highlighted version of any text passages found. The person marking will decide what to do with it, which may not be a lot depending on how important the paragraph or quote is.

pseudo_23

i didn't plagiarise, i never lift a direct quote from a book, i was just wondering if i forgot to list a reference, it would be classed as plagiarising and wondered what the penalty could be. That is all.

parker kent

Red Alert wrote: »

I'd add also that your essay will not be assessed by SafeAssign. SA will provide a numerical score and a highlighted version of any text passages found. The person marking will decide what to do with it, which may not be a lot depending on how important the paragraph or quote is.

Well when I say Safe Assign is used to identify plagiarism, I mean that the person assessing the essay will be able to see how high the percentage level is and then decide if they want to investigate. Some will be more likely to look into it than others admittedly.

conor.hogan.2

You could always go and ask the lecturer, but for me that would depend on who they are.

smk89

keepkeyyellow wrote: »

My house mate got done for plagarism in first year for film studies, the thing is he just didn't know what citing is being a med student and taking it as an elective. So the essay just didn't count toward his final grade.

Med gives anti plagarism lectures and tutorials from literally day 1. How could he not know that?

Raphael

Because if you're not in a course where you do essays, you don't learn proper citation technique. I only learned how to cite in 3rd/4th year of Physics, when it started being required for labs.

errlloyd

Apparently there is some foreign alphabet letter that looks very similar to an i, and you can do a case sensitive "find and replace" to switch them around so you're less likely to get caught.

I dunno if that works, in my heart of heart I probably know it doesn't, but its an interesting one.

(That along with putting loads of sentences in white font to hit the word count.)

Sid_Justice

errlloyd wrote: »

(That along with putting loads of sentences in white font to hit the word count.)

LOL. I don't think that would work.

smk89

Raphael wrote: »

Because if you're not in a course where you do essays, you don't learn proper citation technique. I only learned how to cite in 3rd/4th year of Physics, when it started being required for labs.

In medical informatics in your first semester you get lessons on plagiarism and citations.

Raphael

smk89 wrote: »

In medical informatics in your first semester you get lessons on plagiarism and citations.

Weird.

Blacey

keepkeyyellow wrote: »

he just didn't know what citing is being a med student

This is no excuse for not knowing how to cite or the reasons WHY we have to cite our sources.

Killer Pigeon

parker kent wrote: »

Well when I say Safe Assign is used to identify plagiarism, I mean that the person assessing the essay will be able to see how high the percentage level is and then decide if they want to investigate. Some will be more likely to look into it than others admittedly.

Some of the stuff that comes up on Safe Assign is just so stupid I find. Like I submitted an essay once and 4chan sort of websites came up.

Killer Pigeon

Raphael wrote: »

Because if you're not in a course where you do essays, you don't learn proper citation technique. I only learned how to cite in 3rd/4th year of Physics, when it started being required for labs.

In 3rd Physics here. When do you think they'd tell you if there was some plagiarism? Would these things be investigated after the interviews for reports?

Raphael

Dunno, tbh - I never plagiarised anything =D