Information Literacy for Health Professionals

Plagiarism in any setting occurs when a writer uses someone else’s language, ideas or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source. This applies to texts published in print or online, to manuscripts, and to the work of other students.  Researchers/students who knowingly submit work containing plagiarised material are guilty of academic misconduct - possibly resulting in dismissal from a course and/or severe reputational damage.   Avoiding plagiarism is easy as long as you adopt good referencing practice, since it not using other writers’ material that constitutes the offence, but failing to acknowledge the source.  Specific institutions have plagiarism guidance - guidance for UHI (opens in new window) and guidance for NHS Scotland (opens in new window)

The easiest way to ensure you avoid plagiarism is to ensure you give credit whenever you:

• Use another person’s idea, opinion or theory,
• Use any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings that are not common knowledge,
• Use quotations of another person’s spoken or written word,
• Paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.

Avoid being accused of plagiarism by:

• Adding quotation marks when using anything that comes directly from the text,
• Using the correct method of in text citations
• Paraphrasing ideas, making sure you are not just rearranging or replacing a few words,
• Checking your paraphrase against the original text to be sure you have not accidentally used the same phrases or words,
• Always acknowledging facts, diagrams and original thought.
• Ensure references in bibliographies and reference lists are correct 

A number of software packages can be used to detect and advise on plagiarism.  The software used by UHI is called Turnitin (opens in new window) and is used by staff and students.