Copyrights and Intellectual property

Copyrights are the owner’s legal rights to print, publish, perform, film, or record material and to give permission to others to do the same. All print and electronic material has copyrights assigned to them. It is standard that you can copy 1/10th of a book or one article from a journal, if you are unsure please check with the librarian.

Intellectual property, in general terms, is the protection of an original idea - Cyprus Intellectual property law/Νόμος Περί Πνευματικής Ιδιοκτησίας

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is passing off someone else’s work as your own, without giving credit to the person who produced the work. Your work should consist of your own ideas and beliefs. It should be original and the result of your own research and evaluation.

It is academically unacceptable and also illegal to present the work of others as your own and the university reserves the right to penalize anyone who steals the someone’s work.

 

To avoid plagiarism, you must cite and create a reference list of all the sources that you have used in your document. In addition, to giving credit to the original author, people reading your work can go to the original document for further study.

Avoid doing:

  • Copying someone else’s work word for word
  • Using a phrase or sentence from someone else without giving the reference
  • Downloading material from the internet and presenting it as your own
  • Paying someone else to do the work for you
  • Copying the work or project of another student

References lists can be created, either by:

  • Manually - while studying, record the details of the sources you find and save them so they can be found later. Find a method to organize your references, by saving them into a word processing file, or using bookmarking tools.
  • Using a bibliographic management tool, e.g. RefWorks – helps you to store all the sources you have used and create your reference list by formatting (using output styles) and exporting your references into your document.

There are various ways of referencing and output styles you can use to cite the original work or idea. The most common output styles used for our courses are the Harvard or APA style. Consult your lecturer which output style to use.

Warning! Make sure you use the correct output style