Corvinus TDK

What is plagiarism?

• Presenting another person’s work, intellectual product or property in your own paper without proper source attribution
• Plagiarism is not a formal or content error that costs a few points, but a moral offence that results in automatic disqualification from the competition.
• A TDK paper or any other scientific work must be your own intellectual contribution; even references with proper source attribution must not dominate the text
• Plagiarism does not only mean taking over a single complete work; taking over even a few paragraphs of text without proper source attribution also counts as plagiarism.
• Plagiarism typically occurs in the case of improper verbatim copying, but it can also occur when a longer text is only slightly reworded
• A Hungarian word-for-word translation of a foreign-language text counts as verbatim copying, and the source must be indicated accordingly
• Unfortunately, not knowing the referencing rules does not exempt the plagiariser from responsibility

Before uploading, you also have the opportunity to check your TDK paper for plagiarism with an Urkund check: CLICK HERE

Does it count as plagiarism if a journal article is later prepared on the basis of the TDK paper?

• The priority in time of the TDK paper is important; in this case, the article must refer to the TDK as a precursor
• If the article had already been submitted at the time of writing the TDK paper and its publication is in progress, this must be mentioned in the TDK paper (if the authors of the article differ from the authors of the TDK paper, the contributions must in any case be indicated, and it must be made clear that the TDK paper is the own work of the author(s) named there)
• Professional and ethical guidelines (OTDK Economics Professional Committee, 2018)

In which cases do we quote texts verbatim?

• If, for the sake of the content, it is essential that every word of the text matches the original exactly, e.g. in the case of legislation
• If the wording itself can be regarded as the intellectual product of the original source, e.g. in the case of a beautifully phrased artistic or literary text
• If we do not identify with the text because of its content or form, and deliberately attribute it to the original source, e.g. in the case of a debatable text

How do we mark a verbatim quotation?

• Text taken over verbatim must be placed in “quotation marks”
• At the end of the quotation or the quoted sentence, the source must be given with the page number, a correct example being: (SMITH, A. 2020 p. 12.)
• It is not mandatory, but verbatim quotations are often set in “italics” to separate them from your own text

How long can a verbatim quotation be?

• In the paragraphs of the main text, avoid verbatim quotations longer than 2–3 sentences
• A verbatim quoted whole paragraph is best set apart from your own text in block-quote format: indent the text by 1 cm on both the left and the right, reduce the font size to 10 pt, and leave one blank line before and after the paragraph
• Longer verbatim quotations occur only rarely, e.g. in the case of legislation; these are customarily placed in an appendix

What does a formally correct reference usually look like?

• For source attribution we use in-text parenthetical references, in which the author’s name and the year of publication of the cited work are placed in parentheses
• A parenthetical reference does not have to be placed at the end of a paragraph; it can come at the end of any sentence, and occasionally even in the middle of a sentence
• It is important to note that references can take several forms; the key is to be consistent with yourself throughout the text
• Every source cited in the text must appear in the reference list, and every item in the reference list must appear in an in-text parenthetical reference
• A form commonly used in academic writing is the author’s surname followed by the initial of the first name, then the year: (KOVÁCS Á. 2009)
• For foreign authors, a comma is placed after the surname: (SMITH, A. 2006)
• For sources with two authors, both authors’ names are shown, separated by a dash longer than a hyphen (Word shortcut: CTRL –): (WHITE, J. – BLACK, S. 2005)
• For more than two authors, only the first author’s name is shown, followed by et al.: (NAGY Z. et al. 2006)
• Several sources can be cited for one idea; within the parentheses, multiple sources can be listed separated by semicolons, with the sources ordered primarily chronologically and, for the same year, alphabetically by author name: (WHITE, J. – BLACK, S. 2005; NAGY Z. et al. 2006; SMITH, A. 2006)
• If you cite a source that itself refers to an earlier source, both sources are given in the in-text parenthetical reference, but only the later one, which you read directly, is listed in the reference list: (WHITE, J. – BLACK, S. 2005 cited in: KOVÁCS Á. 2009)
• If several sources by the same author from the same year are cited, they are distinguished by lowercase letters after the year, with the letter order determined alphabetically by the titles of the cited works, and of course also at the corresponding items in the reference list so that they can be identified: (KOVÁCS Á. 2009a) and (KOVÁCS Á. 2009b)
• If the year is not known, write n. d. (which stands for “no date”) in place of the year after the author’s name: (KLEIN, M. n. d.)
• For edited works, after the author’s name write, according to the language of publication, szerk., ed., eds. (for multiple editors) or Hrsg.
• For a book chapter, cite the author of the given chapter rather than the editor or author of the containing volume.

Guidelines on the responsible use of artificial intelligence

• General guidelines (OTDT Presidium, October 2025)