All students are expected to act honestly in the preparation and submission of their work. Certain types of behaviour are clearly unacceptable, such as falsifying data and cheating.

Plagiarism is likewise unacceptable; some of the key points you should be aware of are listed below, but to avoid any uncertainty regarding what constitutes plagiarism it is essential that you read carefully the College regulations.

The Library provides lectures on avoiding plagiarism and citing and referencing to all first year students which has been timetabled. Attendance is compulsory and will be monitored. First year students will be required to complete a plagiarism module on Black Board Learn which includes a test.

To comply with College policy, the Department of Aeronautics has decided that you must make a declaration at the beginning of session, that all coursework (including labs, applications, projects, etc) which you will be submitting will be your own work. Plagiarism declarations will be submitted via Blackboard Learn and full instructions will be issued to you by programme administrator at the start of term and all students are required to respond and failure to do so may result in loss of coursework marks.

For emphasis, the main points regarding plagiarism as outlined in the College website above are as follows.

• You are reminded that all work submitted as part of the requirements for any examination (including coursework) of Imperial College must be expressed in your own words and incorporate your own ideas and judgements.
• Plagiarism, that is, the presentation of another person’s thoughts or words as though they were your own, must be avoided, in particular for coursework, essays and reports written in your own time. Note that you are encouraged to read and to criticise the work of others as much as possible. You are expected to incorporate this in your thinking and in your coursework and assessments, but you must acknowledge and label your sources.
• Direct quotations from the published or unpublished work of others, from the internet, or from any other source must always be clearly identified as such. A full reference to their source must be provided in the proper form - and quotation marks used.

Citing and referencing

Refer to the Citing and Referencing Guide - Vancouver Style

Students are required to use the Vancouver system in all technical documents delivered to the Department. The College also makes freely available reference management software (Refworks) to aid students in their citing and referencing. Training on this software will be provided in the Autumn term.

Remember that a series of short quotations from several different sources, if not clearly identified as such, constitutes plagiarism just as much as a single unacknowledged long quotation from a single source.

Equally, if you summarise another person’s ideas, judgements, figures, diagrams or software, you must refer to that person in your text, and include the work referred to in your bibliography. Departments are able to give advice about the appropriate use and correct acknowledgement of other sources in your own work.

• The direct and unacknowledged repetition of your own work which has already been submitted for assessment can constitute self-plagiarism. Where group work is submitted, this should be presented in a way approved by your department. You should therefore consult your tutor or course director if you are in any doubt about what is permissible. You should be aware that you have a collective responsibility for the integrity of group work submitted for assessment.
• The use of the work of another student, past or present, constitutes plagiarism. Where work is used without the consent of that student, this will normally be regarded as a major offence of plagiarism. The College may submit your coursework to an external plagiarism detection service. By registering with the College you are automatically giving your consent for any of your work to be submitted to such a service.
• Failure to observe any of these rules (or to be a party to such behaviour, e.g. by knowingly allowing another person to copy your work) may result in an allegation of cheating.
• Cases of suspected plagiarism will be dealt with under the College’s Procedure for Dealing with Examination Offences and may result in a penalty being taken against any student found guilty of plagiarism. These penalties can be very severe, (e.g. no degree).

Plagiarism detection - use of Turnitin

The Department uses the Turnitin text matching software on selected assignments to aid in the detection of plagiarism.

Please see list of assignments below which are submitted via Turnitin. For these assignments students will have the opportunity to submit a draft document for checking against Turnitin and to use the Turnitin Similarity Report to make changes to and resubmit their work prior to the assignment deadline.

Further information on Turnitin together with a video tutorial are available in the Library folder on the Student Portal.

• AE3 – Group Design Project Report
• AE4 – Final Year Project
• MSc Composites - Literature Review and Project Report
• MSc Adv Computational Methods - Project Report
• MSc Advanced Aeronautics Engineering - Project Report