Allegation of breach of Dissertation !!!

I need advice regarding my dissertation submitted for MA Management, i got a letter from University stating the explanation that how my dissertation is matched with other university student 30% dissertation which was submitted on 2009 and other 17% from the internet.

The overall similarity has prompted the investigation to be undertaken which conclude one the the following.

1) No case to answer
2) poor academic practice
3) possible academic missconduct


They need email explanation within 5 days. I am really confused, I did research from the on-line material too and there was no other way i could have finished that without.

Please advice me i am really tense.

In any case, given the high compatibility they have suggested (almost 50%)

Well it sounds like they've put your dissertation through TurnItIn, or something similar, so you should ask to see the report.

The first thing I'll say is that you shouldn't necessarily be panicking (unless you genuinely have plagiarised). TurnItIn is NOT a plagiarism detector. All it does is compare your text with the text in its database, and produces a report on similarity of text (matches and near matches). This in and of itself is not evidence of academic misconduct (especially since it doesn't check references). Most universities will have a policy by which they have to 'investigate' any piece of work with a similarity score higher than 'x'. So they will look at the sections of your dissertation that TurnItIn flagged up, and if you've referenced properly then there will be no case to answer. There is nothing wrong with using online sources, but some people can get tripped up on how to reference them properly.

So, ask for the report. Go through your dissertation thoroughly, and check that you have referenced everything. Then check your dissertation against your university's academic misconduct policy. Then respond by email stating that you have picked over your dissertation and double checked all your referencing, and you don't feel that there has been any academic misconduct. But if you find incorrect referencing, or sections where you have missed references, be honest about it.

And remember, if you haven't plagiarised then you'll be fine

Thanks for your reply

My Dissertation topic was " Coaching of Mobile Networks " which involves data from online books, journals or from the other source plus collecting phone call data from the mobile companies. According of the report i received it say my data has been matched with other university student dissertation plus source of internet.

I feel like crying and

I am really confused, I did research from the on-line material too and there was no other way i could have finished that without.

Can you expand further on the above? In particular, did you reference all source material properly (whether quoted or paraphrased), and did you quote / copy and paste large chunks of text?

I'm assuming that if they used Turnitin, they would surely first have checked referencing etc before sending the letter?

yes i did use reference properly but most of the data i had to to research from the internet according to my topic.

Could you please advice me what explanation should i give them, i need to reply them by 5 days.

Thanks

Alison

Woah you can't add those up.

It was 30% similar to one source and 17% similar to a second source.
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I agree that you should be honest in whatever you email them. If you didn't plagiarize then make sure they have a copy of your bibliography and like the previous poster said ask to see the material that they claim is similar. Maybe you should ask to speak to someone in person about this to get further clarification of what is going on.

However, what is worrying is that 30% of your dissertation matched another student's. That is a very high percentage in that instance. The innocent explanation could simply be that you both used the same source data - again, if this is correctly referenced you have nothing to fear. I'm assuming you didn't collaborate with another student in doing this dissertation and that nobody would have been in a position to copy your work (or you theirs).

Of course you can add those up; you can plagiarise from multiple sources.

That doesn't account for the possibility of overlaps, though - what if the 2009 dissertation was already drawing heavily on that internet source, for example? Some of the matches with the 2009 dissertation may easily correspond to matches with the internet source, so a 30% match with one and a 17% match with the other doesn't automatically mean that 47% of the entire dissertation matches other sources. For all we know, the student who wrote that earlier dissertation may have had to go through a plagiarism hearing as well...

The user suggested that I could not just simply add the numbers together. I explained how you could quite reasonably do this. Anything beyond this is speculation (i.e. discussing overlaps etc.).

Working on the assumption that there are no overlaps and you can just add up the scores is equally speculative. It's just speculation masquerading as reason.