Fair use policy sample

This fair use policy appears on any of our websites that offer services to students. It is reflected in the terms and conditions, and our staff are trained to help people understand how it works.

To find out more about our attitude towards cheating, please read a note from our team.

Summary

• Customers purchasing a custom model answer from [Service Name] must use this as a guide to help them to produce their own piece of work.
• Customers must not hand in the custom model answer that they purchase from [Service Name] as if it were their own work.
• Academic Knowledge does not supply the copyright for any work that it commissions for its customers.

Guidance on fair use

What is the purpose of a custom essay?

Students spend a great deal of time reading through a vast amount of research material, which may or may not contain relevant information to their studies.  Further, the style in which that material is presented is rarely the same as the style in which they will need to tackle their assignments.  Whilst tutors will sometimes give valuable guidance on the essay writing process, only a minority of tutors meet the issue head-on by providing students with example answers designed to show the student how the essay should be tackled.

It is an undisputed fact that one of the very best ways of learning is by example. Practically all of our knowledge is acquired in this way from the day we are born.  Hence, a custom model answer provides one of the very best research tools a student could wish for.  The answer gives the student an example of how the question can be tackled.  It may not be the only way that the question could be tackled - and indeed, the student may form an entirely different view to that of the researcher – but the model answer will provide the student with a starting point to conduct their own research and to write their own work.

How should I use my custom essay?

You should use your custom essay very much in the same way that you would use a book or journal that you found on exactly the same subject.  Just as you would not copy from the book or journal, neither should you use the researcher’s work word-for-word.  Instead, you should examine the ideas and arguments the researcher has presented and try to formulate your own.  You can also look up the material the researcher has found, and use their bibliography to ‘snowball’ your own reading.

In summary…

• Read through the essay so that you understand how the question has been answered.
• Try to develop your own ideas and arguments as a result of examining the model answer.
• Study the material that the researcher has found for you, and use this to find more material.
• Use the essay that our researcher has produced as a guide to producing your own work.
• Ensure that your final piece of work is 100% original and formulated using your own creative thoughts.

What is plagiarism?

Here are some examples of plagiarism:

• Passing off someone else’s words as your own.
• Passing off someone else’s ideas as your own.
• Rewording a source but retaining the original ideas it contains, without giving due credit.
• Failing to put a quote in quotation marks.
• Copying large sections of someone else’s words or ideas, even if credit is given or quotation marks are used.
• Giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation – for example, citing a source that you have not actually consulted yourself.
• Changing the words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit.

These are just examples and are not exhaustive.

Every university has a different definition of plagiarism but we are confident that most universities would agree with this list.

Whilst some universities do not like students using our service, it is not plagiarism to use our service if it is used in accordance with this fair use policy.

If I hand in the work without changing it, will I get caught?

Our work is 100% original and written to your specification, so if it were handed in to a university then the university would not know from using a plagiarism scanner alone that you had used our services, because the work we supply will never be uploaded to the web.

However, this is not to say that your tutor would not recognise the fact that you had handed in work that was in a different writing style to your own. Further, the tutor may ask you to discuss the work with them, which may be difficult if you haven’t done the research yourself.

Handing in our researchers’ work without changing it is plagiarism because you are ‘passing off someone else’s words as your own’. Even ‘changing it around a bit’ would be plagiarism in accordance with the definition we gave above. The custom research we provide will be of far greater benefit to you if you use it in accordance with our fair use policy. You can then integrate your own knowledge acquired from lectures, useful advice from your tutor and supplementary research you have carried out. You’ll improve your grade, learn how to write a great essay and feel a great sense of satisfaction for having done a good job, on your own merit.