PLAGIAT :

PLAGIER, c’est reprendre les mots, les idées ou les données (chiffres, tableaux, illustrations) d’une autre personne en les faisant passer pour les vôtres. Même traduire partiellement ou totalement des textes d’autrui constitue une forme de plagiat si la source n’est pas indiquée.

Le plagiat est aussi répréhensible que copier lors d’un examen.

Lorsque l’on cite des écrits et des pensées des autres, il faut le faire de façon acceptable afin de ne pas se rendre coupable de plagiat : tout emprunt doit être placé entre guillemets et accompagné d’une référence complète (nom de l’auteur, intitulé du livre ou de l’article, date, page), y compris s’il s’agit d’un texte consulté sur Internet (référence du site Web) ou d’une traduction.

Il est également inacceptable de paraphraser les mots d’un autre en les faisant passer pour les vôtres : tout emprunt d’idées doit être accompagné d’une référence complète.

Le plagiat est facilement détectable. Tout plagiat (ou toute triche) sera sanctionné soit d’un 0/20 soit de DEF, et l’étudiant.e sera convoqué.e devant un conseil de discipline.

Le texte ci-dessous est une adaptation du document sur le plagiat de l’Université d’Ottawa (Canada), site web : www.uottawa.ca/plagiat.pdf

 

 

Plagiarism: a brief outline for students

1. What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is any form of presenting the work of another person as your own. The most common forms of plagiarism are:

· Word-for-word copying from any source (including internet) unless the words are enclosed in quotation marks and the source is appropriately referenced in a footnote;

· Paraphrasing a source without acknowledging that source in an appropriate reference;

· Translating a text written by someone else also constitutes plagiarism if you do not acknowledge your source;

· Submitting work written in whole or in part by someone else.

 

2. Why are students inclined to plagiarize?

Students often feel driven to plagiarism: when you look for more information, or for ideas, in books or on the internet, it is easy to imagine that the ideas are better expressed in the source than in your own words (especially in English), and so it is tempting to use the original text; when you have work to hand in and you have not got much time, it is also tempting to copy bits of a text in order to write your essay.

 

3. Why you should not plagiarize?

The main reason is because plagiarism is basically dishonest: it means that you are stealing someone else’s words. In law, when someone publishes a book which includes bits taken from another book, he is guilty of breaking the law on copyright (the legal definition of this is when a phrase of more than five words is taken), and is likely to be prosecuted for his action.

Since your work is not going to be published, the law does not apply, but your plagiarism is no less wrong. It is similar to cheating at an exam by looking at another student’s paper.

Plagiarism is also unfair to other students who have made a real attempt to cope with the demands of the subject.

In addition to being dishonest, plagiarism shows that you have been lazy about learning: it means that you have not tried to understand and think about what you have read, and so you have not gained any benefit from your reading.

Finally, we are interested in teaching you to think, and so we want to see your ideas and your words. We would all rather see a poor essay where the student has tried to understand and think, than a plagiarized piece of work which may look better at first, but which reveals a lack of thought and understanding, and which will be penalized.

 

4. Does this mean that it is wrong to use books and the internet to help write a piece of work ?

No. It is useful for all of us to get more information, and to look at other people’s ideas on a subject in order to develop our own ideas. If you want to add background information to an essay, you should use your own words to give that information and give the reference (that way, if your source is wrong, the fault is the source’s and not yours). If you have found an idea, you must think about it for yourself: a good idea is to see whether you really think that the idea applies to what you are writing about and to develop the idea, or point out its limits when applied to your subject. But of course you must give a reference if you express the idea in your own words, and if you use the words of your source, those words must be in quotation marks, again with a reference. Remember : just because something is printed in a book or published on the internet, this does not mean that it is right. Quoting your sources protects you as well as your source. The internet contains good things and bad things, and it is even more important than with books (books are not published without some form of checking) to take a critical look at what you find.

 

5. How should I give a reference to a source?

The reference should be precise. For a book, you must give the name of the author, the title of the work, the date of publication and the exact page reference. For an article, you must give the name of the author, the title of the article, the name of the book or periodical containing the article (and the number of the issue for a periodical), its date, and the exact page reference. For references from the internet, you must give the complete reference of the website and any other details which will bring your reader to the particular page you have used (copy what you see at the top of the screen). It is not enough simply to add a short reference in your bibliography, without giving any details about the page.

 

6. What if my essay contains some words or ideas that happen to come from a source but I don't remember that they do or forgot to reference them?

The simple answer is that this should never happen. You should make a note of the source as you take notes or copy a phrase, so that you can give the reference when you use the material.

 

7. What about exams?

Cheating at an exam by looking at what another student is writing or by putting things on to a mobile phone is an attempt at fraud and is dealt with by the rules concerning exams (see above, page 6). Occasionally students learn large parts of books by heart and then copy those bits down as part or all of their exam answers. This is plagiarism, just as if the student had copied directly from the source for an essay, and will be dealt with in the same way.

 

8. What are the risks involved?

Plagiarism is easily detected by academics. A piece of work that contains plagiarism will receive 0/20. If a student continues to plagiarize after the first time, he may receive a heavier penalty: the module concerned can be declared invalid, which will also make the semester invalid.

 

Examples of what is, and what is not, plagiarism

Students are asked to write an essay about a short story by Rosamund Lehmann, “A Dream of Winter”, which is one of the stories in the anthology edited by A.S. Byatt, The Oxford Book of English Short Stories (1998; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). A student looks at the introduction for ideas, and finds the following remarks on this particular story: “Rosamund Lehmann’s A Dream of Winter is both lyrical and precise, an evocation of a particular time and place, a cold country house in a wartime winter, the urgency of the feeling of entrapment and suppressed energy quite naturally embodied in the summer bees in the winter chimney. There is savagery in the lyricism, too. The note is not single, though the effect is unified.” (Introduction, p. xxv.)

 

- One student simply borrows from the text to start his essay:

“This story is both lyrical and precise, an evocation of a cold country house in a wartime winter.”

This is plagiarism: the text has been cut, and is given without any reference to the source. This suggests that the words are the student’s, when they are not.

 

- Another student also borrows from the text, changing the order of words and ideas:

“The story is full of suppressed energy and the urgency of the feeling of entrapment with summer bees in the winter chimney; although there is lyricism, there is savagery in it too.”

This is plagiarism: the words have been re-arranged, but the ideas all come from the text, and again there is no reference to the source.

 

- Another student picks up more than one idea:

“A.S. Byatt (in her introduction to the anthology, The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, 2002, p. xxv) suggests that the story “is both lyrical and precise”, but we see that there is savagery in the lyricism too.”

This is plagiarism: although a reference is given for the quotation at the start of the sentence, the student goes on to use another idea, without either quotation marks or further reference.

 

- Another student starts from the introduction and develops the idea:

“A.S. Byatt (in her introduction to the anthology, The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, 2002, p. xxv) suggests that the story “is both lyrical and precise”. The story mixes precise everyday details (the heroine is in bed with influenza just as the workman comes to remove the bees from the wall of her house), and at the same time gives a poetic tone to the descriptions (“Powdered with a wraith of spectral blue, the chalky frost-fog stood, thickened in the upper air…”, D of W, p. 286), although perhaps “lyrical” is not the right word for this effect.”

This is not plagiarism: the words from the introduction are quoted and marked as a quotation, and the reference is given. The quotation from the story itself is given a reference in an abbreviated form. The student has also tried to think about what the critic says.