Question about plagiarism

I would like to get expert advice on this question about plagiarism.

I've found a web site which is useful for one of my university assignment and when reading their privacy policy i found "if you refer to our contents please put link to our web site" so I've referred some of their contents and used to write my assignment. But now university have send me report that i have plagiarized contents in my assignment.

My question is : Can i appeal on this based on that web site's privacy policy ?

 

If you did that it my University, you would have been expelled!. Plagiarism in an academic setting is a serious issue.

Any appeal is not going to succeed if you refer to that website's privacy policy.

 

If you used the website simply as a source, you should appeal. But, you better make darn sure that there's not even a single phrase of text that matches that you haven't quoted as being from that website.

If even one sentence matches between your work and the website AND you did not attribute it properly (state clearly that it is a direct quotation from the website and surround it in quotation marks), I'm sorry my friend, you're out of luck.

If you took sentences and simply changed the word order or switched out adjectives, you're also out of luck for that too is plagiarism.

The terms of service of the site don't relate to a university paper. For example, you can use material word-for-word from Wikipedia online. But, doing so would be considered plagiarism in an academic setting.

 

The key word is 'refer' that does not mean copy

 

I'm not sure, but if you copy and paste or take anything from the content word for word; of course that's plagiarism!

Live and learn.

 

So you copied some things from a website, and you sited your source? That's pretty common, but perhaps you used to much of their content? Of course you can appeal; the question is really will you win.

 

In an academic setting its NOT common. There are warnings all over the place at Universities about not doing it and the consequences if caught. How do you know that this is common in Universities?

 

It's uncommon to quote and cite a source in an academic setting? Is that not where we actually learn HOW to do it in the first place?

 

Sorry ... I misread your post.!!!! I thought you said 'not site the source' .... too late at night.

 

It doesn't matter what the website says, it's your University that has the authority to cry foul when they find that a student has basically just copied the ideas and opinions expressed on a website.

You are a student, you cannot be copying content from the internet and passing it off as your own. Universities know all the tools to find this material out there, they have teams checking content to make sure their students aren't doing exactly what it seems you have done.

Research requires you to gather information on a subject, but only to use those points to create your own ideas. It seems to me as though they've caught you just copying something from a site and claiming it as your own, because the website says you could use some of it (for other sites, not for University).