Here Are the Consequences of Plagiarism in Australia

Why you shouldn’t even think about breaking the rules

If you’re struggling at uni, it can be tempting to take the easy way out to pass a unit or get a good grade. But the easy way out can often mean cheating or plagiarism which is no good for anyone involved.

Before you even consider plagiarising someone else’s work, you should know that there are serious consequences that could impact you, your peers, and the author from which you plagiarised.

Here’s how it can affect your education down the track.

What is academic dishonesty?

Academic dishonesty refers to the attempt to achieve academic advantage by conducting misleading or dishonest behaviour. This refers to both your own work, or if you were to help a friend or group to gain an unfair advantage.

This misconduct can come in many different forms but are all considered equally as bad.

Plagiarism specifically refers to the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and submitting them as your own.

This can look like copying and pasting work from a book or article and submitting it in your essay, re-submitting your own work again or getting someone else to write your work for you.

(If you're so worried about your referencing skills, you can learn our tips and tricks here.)

Exam cheating is another form of academic dishonesty. This can involve writing cheat notes on your body, taking prohibited material into an exam, attempting to communicate or copy from another student, using smart devices to cheat, discussing the exam with someone else while it’s in progress or removing any confidential paperwork from the exam room.

If you’re looking to prevent every form of academic dishonesty you will also want to avoid fabricating any information.

False claims with no citation, research or evidence to back it up can stunt the progress of research and is often very easy to detect.

Collusion is another no no that you will want to be wary of. It’s normal to want to help out your friends and peers if they’re also struggling but there are a few things you want to be wary of when assisting your mates.

Passing off collaborative work as something that was meant to be completed by an individual person, sharing essays and sharing quiz or exam questions and/or answers all count as collusion.

Impersonation and contract cheating is another form of plagiarism that is taken very seriously. This is usually the action of buying assessments, submitting examples given by the university, hiring ghost-writers, paying someone to sit an exam for you or sitting an exam for someone else.

What is not plagiarism?

Before you stress out about all your assessments let us clear up a few grey areas for you.

When using someone else’s work—whether it be paraphrasing, using ideas or directly quoting—as long as you correctly attribute your source or author/s with a reference and citation you won’t risk plagiarising someone else’s work.

You also shouldn’t need to worry about common ideas that have no direct author/owner and no other way to express them. But in most cases, try your best to find a source to cite, otherwise contact your tutor and ask what your best option would be before you proceed.

You also don’t need to worry about submitting information that you have obtained through your own analysis or experimentation. If it is your research, you are the author.

What happens if you’re caught cheating?

If you ever do unfortunately decide to cheat and inevitably get caught, there is a pretty straight forward process that occurs to determine what kind of penalty needs to be handed out.

Each university may have a slightly different procedure but these are the standard steps:

• In the first instance, the misconduct needs to be reported. This is often done by a staff member who suspects academic misconduct in a student’s work. These days, thanks to tech, universities have a lot of useful ways of detecting plagiarism. Even when its not obvious, tools like Turnitin can often detect stolen work and will alert the staff member to whom the work was submitted.
• Once a repot has been made, a determination on what kind of breach has occurred must be achieved. This includes how minor or major it is, who it affects and if any meetings need to be had with the student.
• In some cases, if the incidence of academic misconduct was considered unintended or minor, an educative response by the university may be applied instead of a penalty. An educative response is the action of assisting the student/s in understanding the mistake they have made and aiding them in the process of avoiding it in the future.
• However, in cases of deliberate misconduct and major offenses, the university may decide to take disciplinary action which, depending on the penalty, can have major long-term effects on that student’s education.
• Once the university has informed the student/s of their response, a committee will investigate the allegations at a hearing, which the student/s can attend.
• The final step is to inform the student/s of the overall penalty/s which they will then have the right to appeal if they so choose.

Penalties

Getting caught committing academic dishonesty will result in several very different penalties depending on the severity of the offence and the ruling of any investigation.

Each individual university may take a different approach but in general there are some basic penalties that can apply.

These include but are not limited to:

• An official warning from the university.
• Corrective action taken by the university.
• University recommended counselling.
• Prohibition of access to the university campus and services for a set period.
• The imposition of conditions to students’ access or attendance to the campus or services.
• Require the student to resubmit or revise and resubmit their work.
• Disallow or amend a student’s grade.
• Fail the student.
• Suspension of the student’s enrolment.
• Termination of the student’s enrolment.
• Revocation of the student’s award.

Legal consequences

In Australia, any work made or created is protected by copyright law as per the copyright act of 1968.

It is really important to understand how copyright law works when conducting your assignments so that you attribute correctly and don’t break copyright law.

In cases where plagiarism is found, depending on the level of offence, authors may have the right to sue for stealing their work, monetary repercussions may be applied or it can even be deemed a criminal offence which could result in potential jail time.

We know uni can get really tough at times but even when you’re struggling, cheating is never a good idea.

Instead of doing the wrong thing, seek out help and advice from your tutors, peers or you can even check out some of our other articles on studying at uni right here on the Student Edge website.

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