Course Handbook - Faculty of History

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APPENDIX C NOTES ON THE PREPARATION OF DISSERTATIONS IN THE HISTORY FACULTY, CAMBRIDGE LENGTH OCTOBER 2010 The dissertation must be between 20,000 and 25,000 words. The word limit includes appendices but excludes footnotes, references and bibliography. Statistical tables should be counted as 150 words per table. Maps, illustrations and other pictorial images count as 0 words. Graphs, if they are the only representation of the data being presented, are to be counted as 150 words. However, if graphs are used as an illustration of statistical data that is also presented elsewhere within the thesis (as a table for instance), then the graphs count as 0 words. Only under exceptional circumstances will permission be granted to exceed this limit. CANDIDATES ARE REQUIRED TO MAKE A WRITTEN DECLARATION INDICATING THE NUMBER OF WORDS IN THE DISSERTATION AND TO HAVE THIS DECLARATION BOUND WITH EACH COPY. TITLE A title should be brief and to the point. It should NOT fall into two parts separated by a colon. The title should approximate a simple statement of the subject or contents of the dissertation; do not use the interrogative form. It is advisable to include dates, or some other chronological indication, of the time period covered by the dissertation. BINDING Dissertations need not be hard bound and spiral binding is acceptable. PLAGIARISM The History Faculty statement on plagiarism can be found at the web address http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/plagiarism.pdf. Board of Graduate Studies Statement for graduate students: In general, plagiarism can be defined as: the unacknowledged use of the work of others as if this were your own original work. In the context of an examination, this amounts to: passing off the work of others as your own to gain unfair advantage. Such use of unfair means will not be tolerated by the University; if detected, the penalty may be severe and may lead to failure to obtain your degree. 1 The scope of plagiarism a) Plagiarism may be due to: • Copying (using another person’s language and/or ideas as if they are your own); • Collusion (where collaboration is concealed or has been expressly forbidden, in order to gain unfair advantage) b) Methods include: • quoting directly another person’s language, data or illustrations without clear indication that the authorship is not your own and due acknowledgement of the source; 39
• paraphrasing the critical work of others without due acknowledgement – even if you change some words or the order of the words, this is still plagiarism if you are using someone else’s original ideas and are not properly acknowledging it; • using ideas taken from someone else without reference to the originator; • cutting and pasting from the Internet to make a "pastiche" of online sources; • colluding with another person, including another candidate (other than as might be permitted for joint project work); • submitting as part of your own report or dissertation someone else’s work without identifying clearly who did the work (for example, where research has been contributed by others to a joint project) or submitting work that has been undertaken in whole or in part by someone else on your behalf (such as employing a ‘ghost writing service’); • submitting work you have submitted for a qualification at another institution without declaring it and clearly indicating the extent of overlap; • deliberately reproducing someone else’s work in a written examination.. c) Plagiarism can occur in respect to all types of sources and all media: • not just text, but also illustrations, musical quotations, computer code etc; • not just text published in books and journals, but also downloaded from websites or drawn from other media; • not just published material but also unpublished works, including lecture handouts and the work of other students. 2 How to avoid plagiarism The stylistic conventions for different subjects vary and you should consult your course director or supervisor about the conventions pertaining in your particular subject area. Most courses will issue written guidance on the relevant scholarly conventions and you are expected to have read and to follow this advice. However, the main points are: • when presenting the views and work of others, you must give an indication of the source of the material; conventions for this vary, but one approach would be to write: '... as Sharpe (1993) has shown', and give the full details of the work quoted in your bibliography; • if you quote text verbatim, make this completely evident; again conventions will vary but you might say: 'The elk is of necessity less graceful than the gazelle' (Thompson, 1942, p 46) and give the full details in your bibliography as above; • if you wish to set out the work of another at length so that you can produce a counterargument, set the quoted text apart from your own text (e.g. by indenting a paragraph) and identify it in a suitable way (e.g. by using inverted commas and adding a reference as above). NB long quotations may infringe copyright, which exists for the life of the author plus 70 years. • if you are copying text, keep a note of the author and the reference as you go along, with the copied text, so that you will not mistakenly think the material to be your own work when you come back to it in a few weeks' time; • if you reproduce an illustration or include someone else's data in a graph or table, include the reference to the original work in the legend, e.g. '(figure redrawn from Webb, 1976)' or '( 1 = data from Webb, 1976); • if you wish to collaborate with another person on your project, you should check with your supervisor whether this might be allowed and then seek permission (for research degrees, the permission of the Board of Graduate Studies must be sought); • if you have been authorised to work together with another candidate or other researchers, you must acknowledge their contribution fully in your introductory section. If there is likely to be any doubt as to who contributed which parts of the 40
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Course Handbook - Faculty of History

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