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On What grounds can I make an appeal for the substitution of my Academic Award certificate? My dissertation has been refused to be marked because of 5% similarity to another students work.

F Eneo
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    Please remember that this is a website frequented by people from all over the world. Your question is one step removed from "How long will it take me to walk home from here?" That is: (i) by no means have you provided us enough information to answer your question; and (ii) your question is the kind of question that the people who are geographically proximate to you are much better equipped to answer than a worldwide internet audience. This is a question about the rules of your university. People who don't know your university are not qualified to answer. – Pete L. Clark Oct 08 '15 at 04:58
  • The name of my University is Oxford Brookes University. – F Eneo Oct 08 '15 at 06:24
  • I have not even submitted my final copy of work. I only submitted a draft to my supervisor who is meant to check and tell me what issues he is having with my dissertation. I looked at the piece of work being copied from, entirely a different subject matter from mine, though same population study which I added 5 more centres to mine adding up to 15 and the other students work was just 10 centres – F Eneo Oct 08 '15 at 06:35

1 Answers1

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My dissertation has been refused to be marked because of 5% similarity to another students work.

The key question is whether there was any actual copying:

  1. If you copied 5% of your dissertation or allowed someone to copy yours, then that's a serious academic honesty issue. Whether there's anything you can do to fix it may depend on the circumstances, and you'll have to ask your advisor.

  2. If the other student copied from you without your knowledge or permission, then I hope you'll be able to prove it (but that might be difficult).

  3. If there was no copying, then you need to discuss this issue in detail with your advisor and try to convince him/her that the "5% similarity" figure is misleading. It may be that a plagiarism detecting program gave a misleading result, but there's no way to say without looking at the evidence in detail.

Anonymous Mathematician
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    It's not uncommon for IThenticate (one widely used piece of software) to report 5% similarity for perfectly innocent cases of similar text. For example, I've seen it flag phrases like "Without loss of generality we can assume" that are common mathematical boilerplate and technical terms like "Travelling Salesman's Problem". If the only reason for rejecting the dissertation is a report of similarity at this level, then I'd say that they're not using the software responsibly. On the other hand, if there is actual plagiarism, that's a different matter. – Brian Borchers Oct 08 '15 at 05:07
  • I have not even submitted my final copy of work. I only submitted a draft to my supervisor who is meant to check and tell me what issues he is having with my dissertation. I looked at the piece of work being copied from, entirely a different subject matter from mine, though same population study which I added 5 more centres to mine adding up to 15 and the other students work was just 10 centres – F Eneo Oct 08 '15 at 06:46
  • @FEneo then you are in case 3. Find out who you can talk with about this; blindly trusting numbers from automatic plagiarism checkers is a bad idea. – Davidmh Oct 08 '15 at 08:22
  • The committee has advised me that I have the right to appeal. Now, on what grounds can I do this? – F Eneo Oct 08 '15 at 08:27
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    Ask to point out which parts were copied. – MFornari Oct 08 '15 at 11:39
  • @FEneo: Maybe there's some technical answer related to your university (for example, if they have a list of permissible grounds for appealing), in which case we can't answer it. Aside from that, it sounds like you should appeal on the grounds that you didn't plagiarize and that automatic plagiarism checkers aren't fully reliable without further investigation. – Anonymous Mathematician Oct 08 '15 at 14:47
  • Although I don't know your exact situation, the main question is, Did you intentionally take information from the other students work? And was the similarity intended? Did the student take your work? - If you borrowed from him, obviously complications can be avoided by citing him and giving him credit. If this was completely unintentional, then it is important for you to go and prove this to the committee at the appeal. –  Oct 08 '15 at 17:50
  • I did not intentionally take information from the Student's work. Although we used same A'Level Centres for our case studies. The student used 10 centres and I used 15 centres. number of staffs were quite similar with mine because I got this information from my research assistant. – F Eneo Oct 09 '15 at 15:49
  • I wish I could upload the turnitin result here and my work – F Eneo Oct 09 '15 at 15:59
  • 5% SIMILARITY INDEX 1% INTERNET SOURCES 2% PUBLICATIONS 4% STUDENT PAPERS – F Eneo Oct 09 '15 at 16:04