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Faculty of Law Chair of Civil Procedure and Private Law

Plagiarism

Page contents

  • What is plagiarism?
  • Information sheet of the University Teaching Commission on dealing with plagiarism
  • Plagiarism detection software
  • Further information
  • Et Plagieringseventyr – video by the University Library of Bergen

What is plagiarism?

Academic integrity requires that the intellectual creations, ideas, and theories of other persons be identified as such in one’s own publications, even if they are only reproduced in paraphrased form. A violation of these principles often also constitutes an infringement of copyright law. While copyright law permits the quotation of short passages from another work, it likewise requires that the source be indicated.

But what exactly is plagiarism? Plagiarism is understood to mean the complete or partial adoption of another person’s work without indicating the source and the author. Possible forms of plagiarism, according to Schwarzenegger | Wohlers, unijournal 4/2006, p. 3 (PDF, 109 KB), include:

  • The author submits a work that was produced by someone else (“ghostwriter”) under his or her own name.
  • The author submits someone else’s work under his or her own name (full plagiarism).
  • The author submits the same paper (or parts of it) on different examination or seminar occasions (self-plagiarism).
  • The author translates foreign-language texts or parts of such texts and presents them as his or her own without citing the source (translation plagiarism).
  • The author copies parts of a text from another work without identifying the source by means of a citation. This also includes downloading and using text passages from the internet without citing the source (copy-and-paste plagiarism).
  • The author takes parts of a text from another work and makes minor textual changes or rearrangements (paraphrasing) without identifying the source by means of a citation.
  • The author takes parts of a text from another work, possibly paraphrases them, and does cite the relevant source, but not in the context of the adopted passage(s) (example: hiding the plagiarized source in a footnote at the end of the paper).

Information sheet of the University Teaching Commission on dealing with plagiarism

Fact Sheet on Plagiarism  (PDF, 109 KB)

Information Sheet on the Treatment of Plagiarism (PDF, 104 KB) (PDF, 104 KB)

Plagiarism detection software

Since 1 October 2022, employees of the University of Zurich have been able to have documents checked using the software Similarity by Turnitin. The software can be accessed via SWITCHedu-ID (requirement: UniAccess username and password): Turnitin.

Further information

The website Portal Plagiat, maintained by Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff (Berlin University of Applied Sciences for Engineering and Economics), contains many helpful resources on the subject, in particular articles, literature recommendations, and tests of plagiarism detection software.

Et Plagieringseventyr – video by the University Library of Bergen

The University Library of Bergen has presented information about plagiarism at the university, its “consequences,” and how to avoid it in an entertaining video.