Staff at the University can utilise any of the following services to assist with referencing and the prevention of plagiarism:

• Turnitin (UK online plagiarism detection service)
• RefWorks (online reference management tool)
• Librarians and Study Skills Team
• Library Stock

Turnitin

Staffordshire University currently subscribes to Turnitin’s Online Plagiarism Checking Service. This is a UK based online service used by educators to identify elements of plagiarism within student work. The service enables lecturers to submit student assignments to Turnitin where they are checked against Turnitin’s database of resources including books, articles, internet sites and previously submitted student papers, for originality and plagiarism. Lecturers receive an online Originality Report for each submission highlighting areas of concern.

Lecturing staff can currently use Turnitin via Blackboard or independently via Turnitin’s web service. For more information about the Turnitin Service (including how to use via Blackboard etc) at Staffordshire University, please visit RefZone’s complete Turnitin Service page.

RefWorks

RefWorks is an online bibliographic management tool that is available to all staff at the University. Refworks provides you with an online resource to manage your own personal references which you can add manually or via direct links from many of our online abstracting and indexing journal services from the University. RefWorks not only enables your to store and organise references in a variety of reference styles, it can also create bibliographies and assist with in-text referencing.

For more detailed information about RefWorks, including how to use and login, please visit RefZone’s complete RefWorks page.

Librarians and Study Skills Team

The Librarians and Study Skills Advisors in Information Services can also provide referencing support to staff:

Librarians: can embed referencing skills into subject based library inductions for students, and deliver regular general referencing workshops. Librarians can advise on where to find information, evaluate information and use information to support their work and referencing styles.

Study Skills Advisors: can provide advice and 1 to 1 support with all aspects of academic writing skills

For further advice, please contact your Faculty/School librarian or the Library’s online Help Desk.

Library Stock

All the site libraries at the University provide books and other materials to support the various referencing systems used at the University. You can search for books by using the Library catalogue or contacting your Faculty/School Librarian or the Library’s online Help Desk.

General Library class numbers for Referencing:

• Plagiarism: 808
• Referencing: 808.027
• Academic Writing: 808.066
• APA: 808.06615
• MLA: 808.2

Lecturing Staff can also request items for stock relating to referencing by contacting the Faculty/School Librarian. For further advice about stock, please contact your librarian or the Library’s online Help Desk.