Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity Basics:

To understand academic integrity, let's start by looking at the two words that make up the concept: 

• "Integrity" can be defined as the "quality of being honest and having strong moral principles" (Lexico).

• "Academic" means "[r]elating to education and scholarship" (Lexico).

So "academic integrity" refers to what it means to be honest and moral when it comes to your education and scholarship. 

Some questions to ask yourself:

• How do you personally define "honesty" and "strong moral principles?"

• What would it mean to apply these concepts to your education? 

Values of Academic Integrity

The International Center for Academic Integrity has identified six fundamental values essential to maintaining academic integrity:

• Honesty

• Trust

• Fairness

• Respect

• Responsibility

• Courage

Why Does Academic Integrity Matter?

The school makes a clear case in their Standards for Academic Integrity about what is at stake when it comes to acting with academic integrity during your education:  The purpose of a university education is to learn. Cheating, plagiarizing, and other acts of dishonesty do not contribute to learning. 

Academic Integrity at KC

What is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is not just limited to "borrowing" or "copying" someone else's work. In reality, it's far more serious.  Ideas are called "intellectual property."  That suggests that people own, or have a right to, their words and ideas.  It also suggests that taking someone else's words or ideas is stealing. 

Following are examples of plagiarism:

• turning in someone else's work as your own

• copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit

• failing to put a quotation in quotation marks

• giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation

• copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not (see our section on "fair use" rules)

• Re-using your own past work (self-plagiarism)

• Collaborating with other students on assignments that are meant to be individual (group or team plagiarism)

Best Practices for Avoiding Plagiarism:

There are many ways to avoid plagiarism, including developing good research habits, good time management, and taking responsibility for your own learning. Here are some specific tips:

• Don't procrastinate with your research and assignments.
  Good research takes time. Procrastinating makes it likely you'll run out of time or be unduly pressured to finish. This sort of pressure can often lead to sloppy research habits and bad decisions. Plan your research well in advance, and seek help when needed from your teacher and from librarians.

• Commit to doing your own work:
  If you don't understand an assignment, talk with your professor. Don't take the "easy way" out by asking your roommate or friends for copies of old assignments. A different aspect of this is group work. Group projects are very popular in some classes on campus, but not all. Make sure you clearly understand when your professor says it's okay to work with others on assignments and submit group work on assignments, versus when assignments and papers need to represent your own work.

•  Take Good Notes:
  Keep good records of the sources you consult, and the ideas you take from them. If you're writing a paper, you'll need this information for your bibliographies or references cited list anyway, so you'll benefit from good organization from the beginning.

• Cite your sources :
  Always cite other people's work, words, ideas and phrases that you use directly or indirectly in your paper. Regardless of whether you found the information in a book, article, or website, and whether it's text, a graphic, an illustration, chart or table, you need to cite it. When you use words or phrases from other sources, these need to be in quotes. Current style manuals are available at most reference desks and online. They may also give further advice on avoiding plagiarism.

• Understand good paraphrasing.
  Simply using synonyms or scrambling an author's words and phrases and then using these "rewrites" uncredited in your work is plagiarism, plain and simple. Good paraphrasing requires that you genuinely understand the original source, that you are genuinely using your own words to summarize a point or concept, and that you insert in quotes any unique words or phrases you use from the original source. Good paraphrasing also requires that you cite the original source. Anything less and you veer into the dangerous territory of plagiarism."

Source: Vega García, S.A. (2012). Understanding plagiarism: Information literacy guide. Iowa State University. Retrieved from http://instr.iastate.libguides.com/content.php?pid=10314. [Accessed January 3, 2017]