Harvard Referencing Guide: Home

1. What is Plagiarism

Cambridge Dictionary defines plagiarism as the process or practice of using someone's ideas or works and pretending that it is your own.

2. What is Referencing

Referencing is the practice of acknowledging the sources you used to generate your work.

3. What is Turnitin

Turnitin is a software that matches text and gives out a similarity report on whether a student has submitted their original work or they copied from another source. It is a similarity detection tool that helps lecturer/ research supervisors to deter plagiarism. Turnitin is used to uphold academic integrety.

4. What is Copyright

Copyright is a legal right that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution. In simpler terms, it is the right to copy. This means that the original creators of products and anyone they give authorization to are the only ones with the exclusive right to reproduce the work.

• Show that you have consulted relevant source for a research project.
• To enable the person reading and assessing your work to trace the original sources you have used.
• Provide documentary support for your argument
• Referencing your work adequately will ensure that you are not accused of plagiarism 

• Turning in someone’s work as your own
• Copying words/ideas from someone else without giving credit
• Failing to put a quotation in “quotation marks”
• Providing incorrect references
• Paraphrasing without giving crediting
• Copying so much, that it makes up the majority of your work – cite or not