NOTICES BY THE GENERAL BOARD

Guidance on plagiarism: Notice

The General Board, with the agreement of the Board of Examinations and the Board of Graduate Studies, has issued this guidance for the information of candidates, examiners, and supervisors. It may be supplemented by course-specific guidance from Faculties and Departments.

Plagiarism is defined as submitting as one's own work that which derives in part or in its entirety from the work of others without due acknowledgement. It is both poor scholarship and a breach of academic integrity.

Examples of plagiarism include copying (using another person's language and/or ideas as if they are a candidate's own), by:

• quoting verbatim another person's work without due acknowledgement of the source;
• paraphrasing another person's work by changing some of the words, or the order of the words, without due acknowledgement of the source;
• using ideas taken from someone else without reference to the originator;
• cutting and pasting from the Internet to make a 'pastiche' of online sources;
• submitting someone else's work as part of a candidate's own without identifying clearly who did the work. For example, buying or commissioning work via professional agencies such as 'essay banks' or 'paper mills', or not attributing research contributed by others to a joint project.

Plagiarism might also arise from colluding with another person, including another candidate, other than as permitted for joint project work (i.e. where collaboration is concealed or has been forbidden). A student who has received help from her or his supervisor, or from some other person, with the language and style of a piece of written work should include a general acknowledgement of that fact.

Plagiarism can occur in respect to all types of sources and media:

• text, illustrations, musical quotations, mathematical derivations, computer code, etc.;
• material downloaded from websites or drawn from manuscripts or other media;
• published and unpublished material, including lecture handouts and other students' work.

Acceptable means of acknowledging the work of others (by referencing, in footnotes, or otherwise) vary according to the subject-matter and mode of assessment. Faculties or Departments should issue written guidance on the relevant scholarly conventions for submitted work, and also make it clear to candidates what level of acknowledgement might be expected in written examinations. Candidates are required to familiarize themselves with this guidance, to follow it in all work submitted for assessment, and may be required to sign a declaration to that effect. If a candidate has any outstanding queries, clarification should be sought from her or his Director of Studies or Course Director.

Failure to conform to the expected standards of scholarship (e.g. by not referencing sources) in examinations may affect the mark given to the candidate's work. In addition, suspected cases of the use of unfair means, which might include plagiarism, will be investigated and may be brought to one of the University's Courts. The Courts have wide powers to discipline those found guilty of using unfair means in an examination, including depriving such persons of membership of the University.

The University's plagiarism and good academic practice website (http://www.cam.ac.uk/plagiarism/) provides more information and guidance.

The General Board give notice that, on the recommendation of the Faculty Board or other authority concerned, the regulations for certain University examinations have been amended as follows: