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Avoid plagiarism - for teachers

What can I do?

As a lecturer, you can help your students avoid plagiarism by making them aware of:

Student administrative staff can contact Education Law (UJ) on issues of a legal/educational nature. UJ handle issues relating to any legal complaints the university receives in the educational sphere and deal with cases of exam cheating, etc.

If you encounter plagiarism

If, as a lecturer, you encounter plagiarism, you can obtain help on what to do from Educational Law. They, amongst other things, have produced this page about what to be aware of when you have an exam.

If you suspect plagiarism, the staff at Aarhus BSS and Health can use the tool Ouriginal (formerly Urkund) to help identify where, in any given assignment, an act of plagiarism may have occurred. All staff at Aarhus BSS and Health can create an account with Ouriginal, which is necessary in order to use the tool. Read more about plagiarism detection at AU.

Need help?

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact the liason librarian associated with your field, who will be happy to assist you with your questions.

Alternatively, you are always welcome to contact your local library in AU Library.

More on plagiarism

Stopplagiat.nu

Stopplagiat.nu is a web tutorial for students on plagiarism. It has been made in a collaboration between Danish research libraries and lecturers from the University of Southern Denmark, University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University.

Reference management

If your students cite the source of any material they use, and manage all references in their written work correctly, they will avoid plagiarism.

Read more on reference management and how your students can, for example, make use of a tool for inserting citations and creating bibliographies.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is using someone else's material as if it were one’s own (books, articles, films, web pages, tables, figures, etc.), without referring explicitly to the original source.

It is plagiarism if a student knowingly cheats – if, for example, they were to borrow someone else's work and submit it as their own - but it is also plagiarism if a student’s references to sources are imprecise and incomplete.

Plagiarism detection

Ouriginal (formerly Urkund) is a licensed system for checking for instances of plagiarism in student assignments and exams. It is available to all lecturers at AU.

All staff at AU can create an account with Ouriginal, which is necessary in order to use the tool.