3.1 What kinds of sources do you need to acknowledge?

Properly acknowledging other people’s work, words and ideas that you’ve used in your work is essential for acting with academic integrity and avoiding plagiarism.

When you submit work to be marked that uses the work, words and ideas of others and haven’t acknowledged them properly, you are pretending that it is all your own work when it isn’t. You are trying to get credit for other people’s work.

Acknowledgement is a way of making sure that the people who came up with the ideas get credit for them, which is only fair.

Common types of sources you need to acknowledge

Here’s a list of the most common types of source materials you’re likely to use in your work and all of them need to be acknowledged – whether they’re in print or digital form.

You might be wondering, ‘Is there anything I don’t need to acknowledge?’ And the answer is yes! You don’t need to acknowledge:

• your own experiences
• your own experimental results
• common knowledge.

What do we mean by ‘common knowledge’? Well, common knowledge includes:

• facts that are commonly accepted (for example, there are 12 months in a year)
• facts that are so well known that they can be found in lots of different sources (for example, World War II began in 1939)
• common-sense observations (for example, getting a good night’s sleep before a test helps you focus better).

What about copyrighted material?

In Australia, copyrighted material is protected by the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). As a student, you’re allowed to directly quote or reproduce copyrighted material in your school work without seeking permission because you’re using it for educational purposes only, not to make money. This is called ‘fair dealing for research or study’.

But remember, if you use copyrighted material in your school work, you still have to properly acknowledge the original creator and source according to your school’s referencing style (you’ll learn about referencing styles later in this topic).

How much copyrighted material can you use?

As a student, you’re allowed to use a small amount of copyrighted work without seeking permission if it’s for research or study purposes. Section 40 of the Copyright Act sets out how much copyrighted material you can use for research and study. Please note that your school will have its own policy, so you must check this first.

Please continue to section 3.2