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I don't believe I have been given adequate guidance by my university on what constitutes plagiarism and I've now been accused of it. What action can I take?

I don't believe I have been given adequate guidance by my university on what constitutes plagiarism and I've now been accused of it. What action can I take?

If you’ve been accused of plagiarism as a student, chances are you’re feeling worried, upset and even embarrassed. If the penalties are particularly tough, your course could come to an end and the time you have invested in your studies may have been completely wasted. If you’re part of a regulated profession like law, social work, nursing or medicine, your entire career could be thrown into jeopardy.

It’s vital that we don’t underestimate how serious plagiarism can be. Colleges and universities, quite rightly, have a very negative view of plagiarism. However, many students have faced tough consequences even when the supposed plagiarism was entirely accidental. This often happens because gaining access to information through the internet has become so easy over recent years, and it doesn’t take long to add such information to coursework. Many students have found themselves in trouble purely because of not knowing how to reference adequately or following best practice guidelines when quoting writing from other people.

Making an appeal                  

The good news is that you could be able to take action if you have been faced with allegations of plagiarism and you believe they are unfair or that you have not received adequate guidance about what constitutes plagiarism from your university or college.

You can make an appeal to an Academic Misconduct Panel, but you will need to gain a clear understanding of the allegations and offer a robust defence. Your chances of winning your appeal will be much greater if you have an expert legal firm like Match Solicitors helping you through the process. We can help you defend yourself professionally, whether you failed to reference properly, paraphrased another writer without providing accreditation, have lost the original references due to a printing error or have found yourself met with unfair accusations of plagiarism for any other reason.

How Match can help

At Match Solicitors, we have defended a wide range of students during Academic Misconduct Panel hearings. If you know for a fact that you didn’t intentionally use another writer’s work with the intention of passing it off as your own, we want to help.

We can support you in hearings and can prepare detailed submissions of the highest quality to give you the best possible chance of defending yourself successfully. We recently worked with a student who had been accused of plagiarism after failing to quote properly from sources they had used in their coursework. We prepared a statement that showed any errors were unintentional and emphasised how severe a penalty would seem considering their previous good character and marks. Though the Misconduct Panel planned to deduct marks from his work, it was found that marks had already been deducted prior to the plagiarism allegations. In the end, the client only received a formal warning – the least severe of all the sanctions he could have faced.

Talk to Match today

Had the client not talked to Match, the consequences could have been far more severe and may have put a halt to their course and ultimately, their planned career.

This is a fairly typical scenario so talk to Match Solicitors today if you feel you are facing unfair plagiarism allegations. We are here to help.



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