How to Avoid Accidental Plagiarism

‘Plagiarism is…the unacknowledged use of someone's work’ and can have serious consequences to your academic studies (Pears and Shields, 2022).

Unfortunately, plagiarism can accidently happen to us all if we poorly acknowledge sources, inadvertently quote another person’s work, or even just take poor quality notes.

This guide and workshop will

• Point out some of the blunders to avoid
• Help you understand the importance of good referencing, paraphrasing and summarising
• Provide note-taking tips.

This guide is not subject specific but will give general advice that applies across subject areas, although it will employ the Harvard referencing system to explain referencing techniques. If you're not sure what style of referencing you use, refer to your Subject LibGuide or ask your School. 

This guide is for all students.

Times and dates - 

Workshop dates for the academic year 2024-2025 will be released in due course.  In the meanwhile, see the above presentation. 

If you need further information or any adjustments to fully access the sessions, please contact libraryhelp@tees.ac.uk in advance. 

It is important that you understand the seriousness of plagiarism and how this is defined as 'academic misconduct'. The following information will help you and also provides advice and help.  

• Academic misconduct

• Teesside University Student Regulations

 Please take time to read them carefully. 

You may also find it useful to refer to our Learning Hub Helpsheets 'How to paraphrase' and 'How to reference (Harvard Style)' 

We've also put together an informative reading list of useful resources which show you how to reference your work correctly, collate good notes and help you better understand how to paraphrase, summarise and use quotations - click on the image below. 

If you thought this information was useful you may want to look at these other Succeed@Tees sessions

How to use References             Academic Writing 

If you have any comments about this skills guide, we would love to know them.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.