Library Guides
Subject: MultidisciplinaryAcademic plagiarism
Nowadays it is very easy to copy a text from the internet and paste it into your academic work without citing the sources consulted. This practice is called plagiarism. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to plagiarise is to «take the work or an idea (thoughts, writings, inventions) of someone else and pass it off as one's own». From a legal standpoint plagiarism is a violation of copyright.
What is it?
To learn more about plagiarism, the UOC Library has prepared this dossier that provides resources and tools to avoid and detect plagiarism, guidelines to protect intellectual property, and additional reading on the subject.
The Wikipedia entry for plagiarism. It contains abundant information and interesting bibliographic references on the subject.
The internet has become the main source where information can be located, which has facilitated certain university student practices, plagiarism and cyber-plagiarism in particular. Academic plagiarism and related dishonest practices result in the incorporation, although unevenly, of legal, educational, and anti-plagiarism software, etc., on websites in an increasing number of Spanish university libraries.
How to avoid plagiarism
A collection of practical resources for use in your work.
An information capsule produced by the UPC (Technical University of Catalonia) Library on the proper use of information. Plagiarism, what it is and how to avoid it -- update your knowledge on the subject in less than 5 minutes.
A document from the University of Valencia Library with a number of resources to detect and avoid plagiarism.
A page created by the UPC (Technical University of Catalonia) Library with various resources to detect and avoid plagiarism.
A page created by the University of Alicante Library with various resources to detect and avoid plagiarism.
A document sent to students enrolled at the University of Ottawa.
Practical resources
A resource from Purdue University that, in addition to strategies for detecting plagiarism, provides tools and resources for writing texts without committing academic plagiarism.
The aim of this website is to avoid digital plagiarism using practical tools and resources.
Bibliographic citation
Resources for finding out how to cite a bibliographic reference correctly, plus applications that generate citations automatically.
How to cite a document
Bibliographic citations must contain a series of elements that are set out by the ISO 690:2010 standard. Besides the rules set out by this standard, there are other more usual styles and guidelines depending on the subject area. We provide information about and access to the most relevant ones.
Bibliographic citation (Catalan Government) provides precise guidelines to address any questions that may arise in writing papers, reports or other documents. The structure, which focuses on the various parts of the citation, helps find solutions quickly.
On this site, you will find tutorials, FAQs and other resources that will help you improve your writing and use the APA style for references and learn the conventions of academic publishing.
The APA follows the author-data format and is the most widely-used in the fields of communication, law and psychology.
Drafted by the American Sociological Association, this style uses the parenthetical format for references, including the year of publication, and compiles them in a single section at the end of the document.
It is the most widely-used style in the field of sociology.
In use by the University of Chicago Press since 1906, it defines the guidelines for writing notes, the bibliography and the author-data format for in-text citations.
It is the most widely-used style in the fields of economics, humanities and political science.
It is the style of citation that uses parentheses and the author-data structure for in-text citations and a separate section for the bibliography at the end of the document.
It is the most widely-used style in the fields of science, economics and communication.
Guide for citing references for works in the fields of electronics, telecommunications and computer engineering.
Style guidelines for referencing author identification, resource titles and their sources.
Published by the Modern Language Association of America (MLA), this style uses the author-page format for in-text citations and a list of references at the end of the document.
It specifies the use of inverted commas and cursives depending on the type of document referenced. It is the most widely-used style in the field of linguistics.
References are shown in two ways in medical publications: at the end of the document in a numbered list and in the text in abbreviated format with the same reference number as in the final list.
You can consult the guidelines in this resource created by the National Library of Medicine (USA).
Estil que segueix el format autor-número per a les citacions internes i una llista numerada al final del document. És l’estil més habitual en ciències físiques i de la salut, molt utilizat a PubMed i Medline.
Consult the Mendeley citation guides to find out the differences between the APA, MLA and Harvard styles.
How to cite images
A selection of resources on how to cite the images we use in academic papers, articles, etc. We use a wide-ranging definition for image: photographs, paintings, drawings, pictures, diagrams, graphics, etc.
A guide on how to use images in academic work produced by the University of Cantabria Library.
A guide on how to cite images, one of the Research Guides produced by the University of Washington Libraries.
How to cite social networks
A selection of resources on how to cite the social networks we use in academic papers, articles, etc.
Section of the American University Library website, with examples of different ways of citing information from social media.
Social networks guide of the University of Seville with a specific section for the citation of Twitter.
Consult the Mendeley citation guides to find out how to cite websites, blog posts, tweets, online videos, Facebook posts, etc.
How to cite data
Data must be cited in the same way that we cite other bibliographic information sources, such as articles or books.
Leading global non-profit organization that seeks to help the research community locate, identify, and cite research data.
Automatic citation resources
These applications can be used to search for documents (books, articles, etc.) and automatically generate the corresponding bibliographic citations.
Online catalog of OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), it's the world's largest bibliographic database.
Free automatic citation creator that supports MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian formatting. BibMe will then format the citation information and compile a bibliography according to the guidelines of the style manuals.
Free tool to generate bibliographic references and bibliography with output in MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, BibTeX and Wikipedia {{cite book}} format.
Automatic citation and bibliography creator. Citations are automatically added and formatted in either MLA or APA formats.
How to detect plagiarism
A selection of tools to detect plagiarism in works.
The Wikipedia entry for content similarity detection. It contains abundant information and interesting bibliographic references on the subject.
A collection of programs to detect plagiarism produced by the University of Seville.
Tools
Software developed by Siberia Soft (now Crot Software) that includes a set of tools designed to expose plagiarism in academic papers.
A search engine that compares texts based on paragraphs of between 10 and 100 keywords.
An online service to detect plagiarism in documents or web pages. To check texts greater than 1000 words, free registration is required.
A free tool to search for and track plagiarism. To check texts greater than 1000 characters, free registration is required.
A free tool that detects plagiarism online.
How to protect my work
Ways to protect your work and claim authorship.
A page created by the UPC (Technical University of Catalonia) Library that explains how to avoid plagiarism of your work.
The Wikipedia entry for copyleft. It contains abundant information and interesting bibliographic references on the subject.
A non-profit organisation that develops plans to help reduce legal barriers to creativity through new legislation and new technologies. It develops the Creative Commons (CC) licences.
Intellectual property
The Wikipedia entry for copyright. It contains abundant information and interesting bibliographic references on the subject.
Access to all the information on intellectual property law: the content, the agents and the process.
The academic plagiarism at the UOC
Access to the UOC’s regulations on plagiarism and guidelines for students.
This section has the main criteria governing assessment at the UOC and guaranteeing the academic rigor and quality of its programmes. These regulations may be added to with resolutions from the corresponding office of the vice president.
These regulations cover the general application and development of students' rights and obligations as established by the university's Organizational and Operational Regulations, and establish the mechanisms to guarantee their proper application and protection.
Further reading
View information on academic plagiarism (books, articles, videos, etc.).
A pre-recorded search on Discovery, the search engine for the UOC Virtual Library’s collections.
A pre-recorded search in the UOC's catalogue.
A pre-recorded search in the Catalan University Library Association Catalogue (CCUC).
A pre-recorded search in Dialnet, a document notification service for Spanish scientific journals.
A pre-recorded search on Google’s specialist scientific information search engine.
A selection of videos on academic plagiarism.