It is important to compose all study and research papers independently, use the sources properly, be able to quote and paraphrase information. In case sources are used improperly or the paper is not composed independently, there is a danger of being accused of plagiarism and facing academic misconduct penalties. Plagiarism is not only submitting other authors’ works or their parts as your own creation but an incorrectly quoted text as well.
Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution applies the principles of academic ethics, strives to develop the responsibility and academic literacy of the Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution community, and applies the system of plagiarism prevention in study and scientific activities.
Copyright provisions for the use of information sources
Every original work created is immediately copyrightable, so using works created by others must be done responsibly, taking into account the limitations and exceptions to copyright.
Copyright applies to all works:
- in any form or expression (books, articles, lectures, advertisements, databases, portals, online information, etc.);
- whatever their scientific, artistic or other value (including works by unknown authors, pupils and students, etc.).
Works created are subject to copyright and moral rights:
- Non-proprietary rights define the author’s rights to authorship of the work, the attribution of the author’s name in the work, and the right not to alter the work. They are valid in perpetuity and are not transferable.
- Property rights define the author’s rights to receive income from the use of the work. They may belong to the author or to an assignee (employer, publishing house, etc.). They last for the lifetime of the author and for 70 years after the author’s death. The economic copyright in a work created by an employee in the performance of his official duties or functions, except for computer programs, passes to the employer for 5 years, unless otherwise provided for in a contract.
When using the work, you must:
- identify the author;
- obtain the author’s consent if you wish to use the work (distribution, republication, translation, staging, public performance, etc.) when the work has not expired.
You do not need the author’s consent if you want to use the work for personal, scientific or study purposes:
- to read the work, to copy a smaller part of the work for personal use;
- for teaching and research purposes, to reproduce a short extract of a published work in written, audio or video form, insofar as this is related to teaching programmes, with attribution to the author of the work (but the consent of the author of the work is required to make a work by another author available on an intranet or Moodle, and to use in a publication an image from the other author’s work or the Internet);
- to cite the work in academic and research papers, citing the source and author. The citation must be fair and not exceed the extent necessary for the purpose of the citation.
Details: Law on Copyright and Related Rights of the Republic of Lithuania.
The author’s consent is not required if the work has been previously authorised by the author under Creative Commons (CC) licences. To find out how to publish your own work online and how to use the work of others, use the National Library’s Creative Commons Licensing tool: http://cc.lnb.lt/
What is plagiarism?
Sources of information must be used appropriately in studies and research papers (paraphrasing the text in the author’s own words or quoting a passage of the text in quotation marks), and the quotation or paraphrased text must be accompanied by a reference to the sources used. Descriptions of the sources used must be given in the list of references.
Plagiarism is established if sources of information are used inappropriately in the written work.
Common cases of plagiarism:
- submitting a (bought, downloaded from the Internet, copied) study paper (or a part of it) composed by another person as one’s own;
- providing or paraphrasing other persons’ ideas or theories as one’s own
- providing copied texts from the works of other persons in one’s paper without references to the source;
- providing copied texts from the works of other persons in one’s paper with the source indicated but without quotation marks to give an impression that they are paraphrased by the author of the paper;
- providing less of the cited text (in quotation marks) than copied from the work of another person to give an impression that a part of the text is paraphrased by the author of the paper;
- making alterations (transposing word order, changing grammatical structure, replacing words or sentences, omitting information) in one’s paper having copied a text from the work of another person to give an impression that the text is paraphrased by the author of the paper;
- providing paraphrased and summarised information from the works of other persons without references to the sources;
- providing literal translation of texts from other languages;
- re-citing the data and information from secondary sources and indicating the original source;
- providing bibliographical descriptions of inappropriate, false, or forged sources;
- forgetting to indicate the sources used in the text and in the list of references.
Plagiarism can also occur when an idea or theory, the whole work or data of another author is appropriated, parts of texts by other authors are plagiarised, or sources are not acknowledged in the presentation of images, tables, figures, statistics, etc.
How is plagiarism detected and identified?
Plagiarism can be detected by:
- accidentally, when the author of the work sees his/her work, or parts of it, used inappropriately;
- by looking at the written work and comparing it with other works;
- by checking the work with text-matching tools (computer programs) that automatically compare millions of texts and provide the result of the check – text-matching reports (Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution uses the international text-matching tool Turnitin).
The text matching tools report the percentage of text matches and show the colour-coded specific text matches with other sources. Overlap is the number of times a text overlaps with previously produced or published works by the same author and other authors. Lecturers or others review the overlap reports and, taking into account copyright provisions and citation rules, decide whether the overlaps in the text may constitute plagiarism (the overlap tool does not give an answer to whether and how much of a work is plagiarised, but only shows the number of overlaps with other works).
When is an overlap a case of plagiarism/not plagiarism?
Overlaps can be cases of plagiarism (see above) if the sources are not used properly.
Overlaps are not considered plagiarism if they are:
- single words or single sentences of a general nature;
- general knowledge that does not need to be quoted (e.g. the earth is round);
- lists of references, descriptions of sources, references to sources;
- tables, formulae and figures by other authors with references to sources;
- various names and terms;
- a short quotation, i.e. an exact passage of the text in quotation marks. A short quotation in quotation marks may not exceed the size of a paragraph, and there must not be too many in-text citations;
- a long quotation, set out in the text with increased indentation and references to sources. Long quotations are used only in exceptional cases, when it is necessary to comment on a translation, a legal act, etc.
What percentage of plagiarism can be in a work?
This is the wrong question, although it is asked quite often. If you are asking this question, you do not understand the essence of plagiarism prevention and text matching (see what is text matching, plagiarism and how text matching tools work).
No plagiarism can occur in any work.
Works may contain overlapping text which is not considered plagiarism.
However, each work and overlap is assessed individually. The percentage of textual overlap that is not considered plagiarism is limited to overlap with works by the same author. A high percentage of overlap may indicate that the work is not independently written.
What can text matching tools check?
Text matching tools only perform text matching. This means that these tools cannot check the matching of images, photos, drawings, computer programs and other non-textual information.
Plagiarism checking tools cannot check all the information in the world. They can check works and sources that:
- contain textual information;
- are written in the same language as the work being checked;
- have been published on the Internet;
- are open access on the Internet or published in a database to which the plagiarism checker has been granted access (e.g. the Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution repository).
Plagiarism prevention and checking in Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution
In Kauno kolegija Higher Education Institution, text matching of study works and theses is carried out using the Turnitin text matching tool.
How to use sources appropriately in written work?
While composing study and research papers it is necessary:
- to use scientific and another reliable most recently published sources of various types;
- to constructively analyze, summarise, systematize the sources and compare them with other sources;
- to write the literally provided text (citation) in quotation marks and indicate the source next to it;
- specify all of the sources used in the text and include all of them in the list of references.
For information on how to prepare a thesis in accordance with academic ethics and copyright regulations, see FOR STUDIES – Tips for Writing a Research Paper.