It is important to remember that cheating or plagiarising is to deceive the reader and examiner. When you engage in academic tasks, you are expected to demonstrate your own knowledge and skills. If you submit work that was actually created by someone else, it gives a false impression of your knowledge and abilities and can lead to unfair judgment. In addition, you are creating problems for yourself, because you will need your new skills in your professional life.

Cheating

Cheating involves attempting to deceive in an exam or any other form of academic assessment.

Examples of cheating include:

using unauthorised aids during an exam, for instance, cheat sheets and mobile phones.
collaborating on individual tasks.
copying others' work without proper attribution.
misusing AI tools.

Please note:

Even attempting to cheat can result in disciplinary action.
Helping someone else cheat is also considered cheating and may lead to a disciplinary action.
Using AI-generated texts without crediting the AI-tool as the source may constitute cheating. If you are unsure about what applies to the use of AI in an assignment, always check with the course supervisor.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism means intentionally presenting someone else's work as your own.

Examples of plagiarism include:

using someone else's wording without attributing the source.
citing a source without indicating that the text is a direct quote.
reproducing other people's tables, figures, images and other types of media without indicating the source.
using other people's computer code or experimental results as one's own.
submitting someone else's work as one's own.

Self-plagiarism

Self-plagiarism is when you use texts you have written before without referencing them. It is important to cite your own texts in exactly the same way as you cite other people's texts.

The difference between paraphrasing and plagiarism

Examples of correct paraphrasing versus plagiarism

In the examples, you can see how students have included information from sources in their texts, both correctly and in a way that constitutes plagiarism. There are examples from the humanities and social sciences and science, and medicine. (From the anti-plagiarism tool Refero.)

Further reading

Chapter 2, pp. 38-42 Extra guidance to students on academic writing in Carroll, J., & Zetterling, C-M. (2009). Guiding students away from plagiarism. KTH Learning Lab. Please note that the English version of the chapter starts on page 121 of the pdf.

Test your knowledge

Can you detect plagiarism?

Proceed to the self-assessment test