12. Good Academic Practice and Referencing¶
The Citation and Referencing guide was introduced in September 2020. It contains essential information that you should read as part of your work on this project. Specifically, it covers the issues:
Good Academic Practice - guidance on how to correctly credit work that you have used or discussed in the work that you submit.
Referencing - guidance on appropriate use of references and citation to help your readers understand the sources you have accessed during your work.
Note
Following recent information discussed in the University and within the wider higher-education sector about generative AI, we will soon update guidance about its use and how to report its use. We will communicate this update to everyone on the module and discuss it in lectures.
12.1. Good Academic Practice¶
In addition to the material about Good Academic Practice within the Citation and Referencing guide, the following sections consider some issues that are asked about during work on the Major and Minor projects.
Diagrams and images¶
Sometimes you will want to use a diagram or image from the web or another source. Such images are still subject to copyright and it is not appropriate to simply copy them and include them in your report. Look for any terms and conditions that are applied to the item that you wish to use.
If it is from an academic paper, the author may be willing to grant you permission to use an image. The author’s contact email will normally be on the paper.
Resources from the web may be covered by licenses such as the Creative Commons family of licenses. If they are, look at what permissions are granted and what you need to do to comply if you are making use of something covered by that license.
Book publishers are unlikely to give permission to use an image and restrictions are normally set out in the opening materials at the front of a book.
If you do use an image, diagram or figure, you must include in the caption to the diagram a citation and corresponding bibliography entry that will give the reader details of where you obtained it.
Using 3rd party software and tutorials¶
Depending on the task for your project, it is possible that you will make use of some 3rd party software. Using 3rd party software is possible for this module, providing that:
In your Project Report you must make absolutely clear which pieces of software you have obtained from elsewhere and where you obtained them.
If you have modified them you must explain how you have modified them and which parts you have modified. You should do this in the text of your Project Report and also include suitable comments at the relevant points in the source code.
You must include evidence that the software you have obtained is in the public domain and/or that you have the permission of the copyright owner to copy it and, if applicable, to modify it.
If tutorials are used to learn how to do something, keep records of those tutorials so that you can include them in your References. Learn from such tutorials and then work with the ideas in a way that helps your project.
Using 3rd party software and tutorials is appropriate if it helps the overall aims. However, do make sure that your original work is a substantial piece of work that is more than any facilities that the 3rd party library, or libraries, offer. Similarly, your work must also be more than the output of following a tutorial or set of tutorials. We are looking to see and mark your original work.
Results¶
Some projects will report on analysis or processing of data. All projects should report on the testing that has been performed on the software written during the project. There may be other results produced as a result of the project.
Note that it is unfair practice to falsify results. This means claiming to have obtained results that you have not, in fact, obtained. It includes such things as: adding a couple of extra points to a graph to make it look more convincing, inventing questionnaire responses, claiming falsely that you have carried out specific tests, and ‘inventing’ test results. This can result in penalties similar to those for plagiarism.
12.2. Referencing¶
The Citation and Referencing guide discusses how to appropriately define references and use citations. Read that guidance and follow it for your work on Major and Minor projects.
The guide describes the Author-Date and IEEE styles. A common question is which referencing style should be used. IEEE is more common in Computer Science, but an Author-Date style is also acceptable and may be more familiar to some students. The main thing is that you pick one style and apply it appropriately.
Note
The guidance about the formatting for the references will be updated in week 3 of the module.
