The opportunity to complete the BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting will close in May 2026.
Avoiding cheating and plagiarism
You have done all the hard work producing your Research and Analysis project for the degree, so don’t risk being caught plagiarising someone else’s work.
Watch our video to learn how to avoid plagiarism and cheating when producing your Reasearch and Analysis Project (RAP):
Cheating statement
All assessments are intended to determine the skills, abilities, understanding and knowledge of each of the individual students undertaking the assessment.
Cheating is defined as obtaining or attempting to obtain an unfair academic advantage. Cheating or assisting someone else to cheat (including attempting to assist someone else to cheat) may be subject to disciplinary action in accordance with the University's Disciplinary Procedure.
The University takes this issue very seriously and students have been expelled or had their degrees withheld for cheating in assessments.
If you are having difficulty with your work it is important to seek help from your tutor rather than be tempted to use unfair means to gain marks. Do not risk losing your degree and all the work you have done.
Different forms of cheating
The University's regulations define a number of different forms of cheating, although any form of cheating is strictly forbidden. Details are given below.
Submitting other people's work as your own either with or without their knowledge. This includes copying in examinations; using notes or unauthorised materials in examinations; impersonation - taking an assessment on behalf of or pretending to be another student, or allowing another person to take an assessment on your behalf or pretend to be you
Plagiarism is taking or using another person's thoughts, writings or inventions as your own. To avoid plagiarism you must make sure that quotations from whatever source must be clearly identified and attributed at the point where they occur in the text of your work by using one of the standard conventions for referencing. The Library has a leaflet about how to reference your work correctly and your tutor can also help you. It is not enough just to list sources in a bibliography at the end of your essay or dissertation if you do not acknowledge the actual quotations in the text. Neither is it acceptable to change some of the words or the order of sentences if, by failing to acknowledge the source properly, you give the impression that it is your own work
Collusion is prohibited, except where written instructions specify that work for assessment may be produced jointly and submitted as the work of more than one student, you must not collude with others to produce a piece of work jointly, copy or share another student's work or lend your work to another student in the reasonable knowledge that some or all of it will be copied
Duplication is submitting work for assessment that is the same as, or broadly similar to, work submitted earlier for academic credit, without acknowledgement of the previous submission
Falsification is the invention of data, its alteration, its copying from any other source, or otherwise obtaining it by unfair means, or inventing quotations and/or references
Custom writing services includes the use of any service which produces custom materials for a fee or other benefit. The University may consider any request placed with any form of custom writing service to be a form of cheating, whatever use is then made of the material produced, and therefore to be an offence under the Student Conduct Regulations.
This extends to include any request for any piece of work (either formative or summative assessment or work which is not linked to any form of assessment or credit-bearing element of your programme) including, but not limited to, essays and dissertations (including outlines and guides), reports, exam notes, proposals, posters, presentations, the editing or improvement of existing work, statistical services and computing services including programme and code development.
