Academic Integrity for students
- What is academic integrity?
- Why is academic integrity so important?
- What is academic misconduct?
- What is plagiarism?
- Turnitin
- What can you do to avoid unintentional plagiarism?
- UniSA policy
- Referencing resources
- UniSA Academic Integrity website
What is academic integrity?
Academic integrity is a term used at university to describe honest behaviour as it relates to all academic work (papers written by staff, student assignments, conduct in exams, etc). One of the main principles is respecting other people’s ideas and not claiming them as your own in your writing or presentations.
Why is academic integrity so important?
Academic integrity is the foundation of university life. The University of South Australia wants its students to display academic integrity so that its degrees are earned honestly and are trusted and valued by its students and their employers.
What is academic misconduct?
Academic misconduct is the term used if students fail to act in accordance with the principles of academic integrity.
According to UniSA Academic Integrity policy (9.2.1 in Assessment Policies and Procedures Manual 2009) academic misconduct includes:
- plagiarism
- breaches of examination procedures
- presentation of data with respect to laboratory work, field trips, or other work that has been copied, falsified, or in other ways obtained improperly
- inclusion of material in individual work that has involved significant assistance from another person, where such assistance is not expressly permitted in the Course Information booklet
- providing assistance to a student in the presentation of individual work, where such assistance is not expressly permitted in the Course Information booklet
- falsification or misrepresentation of academic records
- other actions that contravene the principles of academic integrity
What is plagiarism?
At university you are expected to read widely and to use your readings to provide the evidence in your assignments, rather than just to draw on your experience or hearsay. In fact, you are expected to provide evidence to support the points you are making. The evidence that is likely to come from a range of sources must be acknowledged by using an accepted referencing system. If you don't acknowledge your sources appropriately you will be plagiarising. Plagiarism is to take someone’s words or ideas and present them as your own (Marshall & Rowland, 1998). This means that when someone presents ideas or words as if they are their own, they have plagiarised.
Plagiarism is regarded as academic dishonesty and treated very seriously (see the University of South Australia’s 'Policy on Academic Integrity'). This policy recognises that plagiarism can be deliberate or it can be unintentional or inadvertent but it is always considered as a serious misdemeanour. As a graduate, knowing how to avoid plagiarism will be important in your professional life where you will be expected to respect other people's ideas in much the same way as you do in your university studies.
According to the UniSA Academic Integrity policy (9.2.2) plagiarism includes:
- direct copying of the work or data of other persons, from one or more sources, without clearly indicating the origin. This includes both paper-based and electronic sources of material from websites, books, articles, unpublished work such as theses, working papers, seminar and conference papers, internal reports, lecture notes or tapes, and visual materials such as photographs, drawings and designs;
- using very close paraphrasing of sentences or whole clauses without due acknowledgment in the form of reference to the original work
- submitting another student's work in whole or in part, where such assistance is not expressly permitted in the course information booklet
- use of another person's ideas, work or research data without acknowledgment
- submitting work that has been written by someone else on the student's behalf;
- copying computer files, algorithms or computer code without clearly indicating their origin;
- submitting work that has been derived, in whole or in part, from another student's work by a process of mechanical transformation (eg changing variable names in computer programs)
- in any way appropriating or imitating another’s ideas and manner of expressing them where such assistance is not expressly permitted in the course information booklet.
As a student you are expected to research and build on the work of others, but maintaining academic integrity requires you to acknowledge the use of anyone else’s work.
Turnitin
Turnitin is an electronic tool used to promote academic integrity at the University of South Australia. The tool enables a student or lecturer to submit work to check for originality.
What can you do to avoid unintentional plagiarism?
There are a number of resources about referencing available through the Learning and Teaching:
- Referencing and avoiding plagiarism
- On Campus workshops run by Learning Advisers from the Learning and Teaching Unit (either as part of a particular course or general workshops on referencing)
- Turnitin self serve facility to check your work before submission to your lecturer.
If, after working through any of these resources you still have questions about referencing, you can talk them through with a Learning Adviser on your Campus in one of their Drop-in sessions.
UniSA policy
It is important to read Section 9 of the Assessment Policy and Procedures Manual which clearly outlines UniSA’s position on Academic Integrity and explains the consequences of academic misconduct.