-Raj Persaud, Photo taken from Flickr and, yes, he's very good looking isn't he?-Professor Graham Virgo of the Cambridge University Faculty of Law spoke recently to Cambridge librarians about the wide spread issue of plagiarism. He emphasised the need to stress the importance of the issue to students at all levels in their careers and called upon Directors of Studies to report any instances found. He defined plagiarism as "submitting as one's own work that which derives in part or in its entirity from the work of others without due acknowledgement" and quoted a recent study that showed that 49 percent of those students surveyed (over a thousand) in the student magazine Varsity confessed to having been involved in some way at some point in their Cambridge career. Whilst many were loath to copy others work they were happy to collude by submitting their own essays to essay banks and paper mills, and this falls within the definition of the problem: even using someone else's ideas without acknowledgement is plagiarism. Plaguiarism prevention is one of the information skills that librarians can help to promote. Software such as TurnitinUK® can be used to scan essays, and strict punishments such as dropping of examination marks or use of the university courts can help to prevent the problem. Raj Persaud, the well known psychiatrist and writer, was recently called before the General Medical Council of Great Britain and prevented from practicing for three months because of unacknowledged use of another's ideas. I enjoyed Raj Persaud's book "Staying Sane" so I was sorry to hear about this: his books are easy to read and he explain things well but apparently the case referred to an article published in the journal Progress in Neurology and Psychiatry 2005. I hope he continues to write and broadcast as long as he is more careful in future. Making mistakes is part of the learning process after all. You can read more about plagiarism on the : CILIP website and JISC have an internet plagiarism advisory service
see Raj Persaud, Staying Sane, Bantam books, 2001 £8.99
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