What is plagiarism?

Copyright and plagiarism are closely linked. Plagiarism is stealing someone else's work and passing it off as your own.

	How will you know when it is someone else's work?
	When you're a student, your task is to learn, and when you study you absorb other people's ideas.

When you want to learn about a topic, what do you do? You might:

• ask your friends
• ask an expert
• search the Internet
• search a full text database
• read some books and articles.

Gradually you start to understand the topic and form an opinion, or find your opinion changing. Other people shape our ideas all the time.

When you are a student, you often have to research a topic and then present your findings in an essay or other formal piece of work. Your teachers expect you to show that you have read and thought about the work of others. However, it is important to remember that there is a difference between learning from other people and stealing their work.