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How much plagiarism is acceptable?

Clearly, one direct quote of 10 words that the student accidently fails to put in quotation marks will not lead to a claim of plagiarism.

But we are reluctant to put a percentage or definite figure down for what would constitute a claim.

As an example, recently, a student submitted work with: + A 4,000 word appendix made up of copied material most of which she did not attribute to any source + A section of 1,000 words which was at least 50% 'paraphrased' from a report.

The student had changed a few words around, replaced some words with her own, and maintained the entire structure of the report.

+ Padded the bibliography with around 40 sources (only 11 were used within the actual text) The first example - the appendix - is a simple case of plagiarism because she did not give credit to the source.

If she had given due credit, as the information was contained in the appendix, this would not constitute plagiarism.

The second example the student refused to accept as plagiarism because, she said, 50% of 1,000 words in a 19,000 word essay is nothing (about 3% of the overall word count).

We disagree - as would the majority of academic institutions.

That section was heavily plagiarised.

It does not matter that, substracting from 19,000 words the 4,000 word 'appendix' and the 1,000 word section leaves 14,000 words that were relatively well written.

There was evidence of substantial plagiarism in at least those two parts of the work.

The final point about the padded bibliography is a quality issue rather than one of plagiarism.

11 sources in a 19,000 word masters level dissertation is nothing short of a joke.

In a 1,000 word essay, it is highly unlikely that we would regard a 3% match as plagiarism.

So as you can see, it depends on so many different factors, we cannot put a percentage on what is, and what is not, plagiarism.

We know some academic institutions disregard a match of below 5% but as you can see from the above example, this might not always work where the brief is quite long.