1. Research & Referencing SED1007: Week 6

2. Do you trust your sources?  You can find plenty of web pages saying…  “Windows 7 is better than OS X”  “OS X is still better than Windows 7”  “Margaret Thatcher ruined this country”  “Margaret Thatcher saved this country”  Opinion often presented as fact  With over 8 billion pages indexed in Google you can easily find a web page that says whatever you want it to

3. The problem with Wikipedia  The encyclopaedia that anyone can edit  Can include mistakes  Can be manipulated to suit an agenda  Washington’s politicians edit Wikipedia Washington’s politicians edit Wikipedia  Can be incomplete  Wikipedia probably not best source of drug information Wikipedia probably not best source of drug information

4. Not completely useless  Don’t abandon Wikipedia altogether  Should be a starting point – follow up the references and sources quoted at the end of an entry  Often better to cite the references when you read them than the wikipedia entry  Have a sceptical attitude to information online

5. Good practice  Look for multiple sources confirming the same information  Check whether there are sources saying the opposite  Try to assess the trustworthiness of the source…

6. Good sources  Peer-reviewed journals  Fact checked by experts before publication  Text books  Strong editorial controls and reviewing  Not immune from political influence (i.e. Evolution)  Newspapers  Tend to be good at fact checking (at the quality end)  Not immune from bias or censorship

7. Weaker sources  Corporate Websites  Advertising generally has to be truthful  Can omit information  Don’t trust quotations  Blogs & Discussions  Mostly stating opinion  Other Websites  Not regulated  Need to justify your trust

8. Unfair Means

9. University assessment regulations  Plagiarism is a serious offence under the assessment regulations  Penalties include  Having to repeat an assessment  Having to repeat a module  Being permanently excluded from the University  Taken very seriously – all offences recorded

10. Plagiarism means  The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as your own  For example  Copying the work of another student  Copying and pasting text from books or websites into your assignment  Using template sites for your web pages rather than write your own  Can even self-plagiarise

11. Relatively easy to catch  Almost always obvious when we mark a piece of work that is not a student’s own  Suspicious work is followed up  Online tools make it easy for us to check sources  Turn It In for example is highly automated

12. Always cite your sources  As mentioned in Cite My I’m Yours  http://www.bolton.ac.uk/Students/StudyResources/Library/Hel pGuides/StudySkills/Harvard07.pdf http://www.bolton.ac.uk/Students/StudyResources/Library/Hel pGuides/StudySkills/Harvard07.pdf  Either  Paraphrase the source  Talk about the source in your own words  Quote an excerpt from the source  Too much quotation and not enough of your own words can leave nothing to mark!

13. Harvard referencing  Put the name of the author plus the date of publication in brackets (Isherwood, 2009)  Include full details in your Bibliography  If your source is a website the contents may change  State the date you accessed the source  Keep a copy of the version you are referencing  Full details online

14. Include enough commentary  Citing the source deals with plagiarism  Can still get zero marks!  Idea is to use sources to support your argument  Balance should be heavily in favour of your own words justified by references to your sources  Read some of the online sources Steve mentioned last week to see how it’s done