A cut and paste affair

   Thanks to the internet, it's easier than ever to plagiarise – but as
   those who have been copied or caught copying will testify, it is still
   far from acceptable practice
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   headlines.

   With examples like these, what's so wrong with a bit of plagiarism?

   Quite a lot, says John Biggam, who lectures at Glasgow Caledonian
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   Quite a lot, says John Biggam, who lectures at Glasgow Caledonian
   University and who had his book, Succeeding with Your Masters
   Dissertation, plagiarised by another lecturer on the web.

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   "A lot of students think it is acceptable to copy or plagiarise
   somebody else's work because there's this idea that everyone is doing
   it anyway," he says. "It seems like it's not really a serious issue,
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   but it is. If it's a minor case, you could end up losing marks on a
   dissertation or having to resit a module. If it's widespread and a
   student has been found to have plagiarised often, then the most extreme
   punishment they could face would be expulsion."

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   easier to adopt someone else's work as your own.

   According to Biggam, the definition of plagiarism within an academic
   context is: "Where a student copies text verbatim without providing
   sufficient acknowledgement of the source, thereby giving the impression
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   permanent record."

   Cole was lucky to get off relatively lightly. For others, plagiarising
   can spell the end of your degree – even if you are unwittingly
   involved.
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   and the only marks it did give me were much lower than I'd anticipated.
   Then when I got home, there was a letter from the university saying
   that I was suspected of colluding with another student in plagiarism. I
   completely freaked out."

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   behind my back was simply unbelievable. "

   If you are caught in serious and deliberate plagiarism, it could end up
   on your final academic transcript. If a potential employer asks to see
   your transcript as part of the selection process, you can probably say
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   "It certainly wouldn't look good to a future employer if they knew you
   had engaged in plagiarism," Biggam says.

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   But how can you avoid plagiarism, when part of the university learning
   process is to absorb expert theories and demonstrate your grasp of them
   by reproducing them in written work?
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   At Glasgow Caledonian University, Biggam is testing the use of
   plagiarism detection software, called Turnitin, which monitors work for
   any copied phrases. "Often, it might be a genuine mistake – a student
   might simply forget to reference a quote or a source. In which case, a