Poor practices: plagiarism
The IEC Dictionary of the Catalan Language defines plagiarism as: "Inserting part of the work of another in one's own work without indicating the source".
In the legal field, this is a copyright infringement.
What is considered plagiarism?
- Repeating a text without referencing the author.
- Copying images, music, etc. without citing its source.
- Using information extracted from a work or publication and not citing it.
- Paraphrasing a text, without citing the sources.
- Buying or procuring a work and presenting it as one's own.
To prevent plagiarism:
- When we take notes, we must always write down the sources we consult. Therefore, when we finish our work we will cite in the bibliography all the works referenced within the work.
- Paraphrasing: we can use someone else’s ideas and put them in our own words, but we must include the bibliographic reference from the original source.
- Quoting excerpts from other works: if we copy a text verbatim, the entire quoted text must be placed between quotation marks (“). And the full bibliographic reference must be included.
- Correctly citing the sources used, in a standard manner, according to the citation guidelines or style manuals of each School: APA, Vancouver, ISO.
Software to detect plagiarism
There are anti-plagiarism programs, which allow you to trace cases of plagiarism. They are computer programs that compare texts and detect if a work has similarities with other works already published. These programs can analyze a wide range of files (word, pdf, ppt, HTML, etc.). In the case of the Blanquerna Foundation, the Urkund program has been selected.
Urkund: is an automatic text recognition system created to detect and prevent plagiarism in the context of academic institutions. The files are uploaded through the digital learning platform and the professor receives a report on the content similarities found between the analyzed work and the open access resources, those contracted by Urkund or their own database.
