Academic Honesty, Copyright, Autorship, Cheating, Plagiarism
Basic Information
ACADEMIC HONESTY
What is Academic Dishonesty?
The two most common kinds of academic dishonesty are cheating and plagiarism.
1/ Cheating is the act of obtaining or attempting to obtain credit for academic work through
the use of dishonest, deceptive or fraudulent means. Making the reader of your paper believe
that ideas are your own when they aren't. Making the reader of your paper believe that the
writing is your own, when it isn't.
2/ Plagiarism is representing the work of someone else as your own.
Specific Examples of Academic Dishonesty
1/ Purposely allowing another student to copy from your paper during a test;
2/ Giving homework, term paper or other academic work to another student to plagiarize;
3/ Having another person submit any work in your name;
4/ Lying to an instructor or college official to improve your grade;
5/ Altering graded work after it has been returned, then submitting the work for re-grading;
6/ Stealing tests;
7/ Forging signatures on drop/add cards or other college documents; or
8/ Collaboration without permission of instructor.
CHEATING
Fundamental conviction: If students don’t learn integrity now, there’s no hope that they will
learn it later—and the consequences are Enron, WorldCom, political misrepresentation, etc.
Cheating the University
The most precious asset of any school is its reputation. Students want to attend schools with a
good reputation and employers want to hire graduates of those schools. Any toleration of
cheating harms the school.
The “Cheating Zone”
1/ People who plan to cheat often try to sit as far from the professor as possible. That means
they tend to sit together. You should assume that your fellow cheaters are sitting where they
are because they don’t know any more than you do. So it is dangerous to rely on them!
2/ Note: People who sit in the front of a class tend to get better grades. They see better, hear
better, and tend to be less distracted by talking neighbors and people checking their email or
doing other things during class.
What is Cheating? (examples)
1/ Copying another’s work or answers — on tests, homework, assignments, etc.
2/ Using unauthorized materials, such as notes, books, articles, on tests or assignments.
3/ Having someone else do an assignment or write a paper — or portions thereof — for you.
4/ Turning in the same paper or assignment for more than one class.
5/ Obtaining unauthorized, advance copies of tests or assignments.
6/ Listing sources in footnotes or a bibliography that you never consulted.
7/ Fabricating quotations or making up facts in a news story, paper, or any assignment.
8/ Writing a news article or paper as if you attended an event (e.g., a meeting or speech) that
you did not attend.
9/ Lying to an instructor to excuse absences, late assignments, missed tests.
10/ Violating rules on take-home exams, such as the amount of time to be spent on the exam
or materials that can be used.
11/ Stealing books, materials on reserve, etc. from the library.
12/ Assisting another student in doing any of the above.
What’s Wrong with Cheating
Five approaches:
1/ A Kantian analysis: not playing by the rules
2/ A Consequentialist analysis: cheating hurts other people
3/ A Virtues analysis: cheating as a violation of personal integrity
4/ Feminist ethics: cheating as a violation of relationships
5/ Multicultural ethics: cheating and cultural values
Why Students Cheat
1/ Ignorance.
2/ To compensate for poor planning and time management skills.
3/ Poor study skills.
4/ Competition.
5/ Aggressive parents.
6/ We gain our opinions and ideas about issues through conversations, reading and the
Internet, but often neglect to mention those sources.
7/ The concept of plagiarism doesn't exist in some cultures.
8/ Academic-performance anxiety
9/ stress of a heavy workload and the competition for high marks.
10/ Lack of understanding about concepts and ethics of intellectual property.
11/ Lack of confidence in their own research and writing skills.
12/ Project has no meaning for them - they are just “getting it done”.
13/ Some students do not come to higher education seeking an education. Instead, they want
a credential that will get them a job. Learning is not a priority, getting a good job at
graduation is.
14/ Some students resent having to take courses not directly tied to their major. They see
university general education requirements as a waste of their time.
15/ Some students plagiarize because they do not have a lot of free time. They may be busy
with heavy class loads, multiple jobs, family obligations, social activities, and resume
building experiences.
Discouraging Cheats
1/ Making it unnecessary
2/ Making it difficult
3/ Dealing severely with plagiarism at an early stage
4/ Moral climate
5/ Co-operation not competition
6/ Being clear and fair in assessment
Why stop cheating?
1/ science is about truth
2/ Medicine requires reliable information
3/ We are forming the ethical behaviour of important people – physicians, managers and
decision makers
4/ Education should not be reduced to assessment
Prevention
Better teaching
1/ Cheating often arises in a vacuum
2/ Good teaching reduces the likelihood of those vacuums
Better exams and assignments
1/ Individualized paper topics
2/ Rough drafts, outlines, oral presentations of papers
A Culture of Integrity
1/ If we fail to establish an environment of integrity, it becomes reasonable for students to
cheat.
2/ We want to avoid a situation in which honest students are disadvantaged by their honesty
and dishonest students get ahead.
3/ Fundamental values: honesty, trust, respect, fairness, and responsibility,
4/ Direct link between academic integrity and honesty in business and politics, where often
lack of integrity seems the norm.
PLAGIARISM
Elements of the Plagiarism
1/ publication: the presentation of another person's material, work, or idea. The new work is
made available to others; i.e. personal notes are not at issue
2/ content: the presentation of another person's material, work, or idea. Some part of the new
work is derived from someone else’s prior or contemporaneous work
3/ appropriation: the presentation of another person's material, work, or idea as one's own.
An express or implied claim of originality
4/ lack of credit given: the presentation of another person's material, work, or idea as his or
her own, without appropriate attribution. The reader is not made aware of the originator, nor
of the location of the work in which it was originally published
Why Plagiarism is ‘A Bad Thing’
1/ Ethics [But Mark Twain’s outloook was that copying of books for commercial purposes
was theft, whereas plagiarism was just 'bad manners']
2/ Instrumentalism, i.e. less fit academics get advancement (promotion, research grants)
3/ ‘It’s a crime’ [It very likely is not, although it may be actionable in a civil jurisdiction]
4/ ‘It’s a breach of copyright’ [That’s a distinct question, orthogonal to plagiarism]
Intentional Plagiarism
1/ Copying a friend’s work
2/ Buying or borrowing papers
3/ Cutting and pasting blocks of text from electronic sources without documenting
4/ Cutting and pasting pieces from other sources and changing the writing (without citing the
sources).
5/ Media “borrowing”without documentation
6/ Web publishing without permissions of creators
Unintentional Plagiarism
1/ Careless paraphrasing
2/ Poor documentation
3/ Quoting excessively
4/ Failure to use your own “voice”
Not plagiarism - but probably won't go over very well
1/ Cutting and pasting from other sources, putting quotation marks around the material and
saying where the quotes came from
2/ Cutting and pasting pieces from other sources, changing the writing so it isn't the same
anymore and putting references in to say where the material came from
Note
1/ It’s been around since the Greco-Roman era and it’s here to stay.
2/ It’s about ethics, not tools.
3/ Just because we can, doesn’t mean we may.
4/ It’s not a matter of if, but when.
5/ Have a rich toolbox of alternatives.
Why we care
1/ Cheating appears to be on the increase everywhere.
2/ Paper mills are widespread.
3/ The Internet is an enabler of plagiarism.
4/ Tolerating cheating angers our best and brightest students.
5/ Tolerating cheating cheapens our degrees.
Is this important?
1/ Your architect cheated his way through math class. Will your new home be safe?
2/ Your lawyer paid for a copy of the bar exam to study. Will the contract she wrote for you
stand up in court?
3/ The accountant who does your taxes hired someone to write his papers and paid a stand-in
to take his major tests? Does he know enough to complete your tax forms properly?
What’s the big deal about plagiarism?
A university is a community of academic or scholars. Like many professions, scholars have
their own culture. A feature of human cultures is that they have sets of values that govern the
way people conduct themselves. Plagiarism violates the cultural norms of academia.
Avoiding plagiarism
1/ Take careful notes
2/ Summarize in your own words
3/ Mark other’s intellectual work with quotation marks and/or in-text citations.
4/ Provide bibliographic information for your sources in a reference list.
Note-taking
1/ Avoiding plagiarism begins with good note-taking.
2/ As you take notes from your reading, be sure to keep track of where your information
comes from.
3/ In your notes, you should mark which words are your own summaries (paraphrasing) of
someone else’s information, which are your own ideas, and which are direct quotations.
How to properly cite
To “cite” someone else’s intellectual work you have to do two things:
1/ Mark the passage that is not your own with an in-text citation mark and quotation marks
(when appropriate).
2/ List the bibliographic information for the source of the passage in a reference list.
When DON’T I have to cite?
1/ When providing your own, original analysis of other people’s intellectual work
2/ When expressing an original thought of your own
3/ When relating information from your own research or life experience
4/ When reporting “common knowledge”
“Common Knowledge” in Biology
Examples
1/ Diabetes is a disease caused by an inability to either make or use insulin.
2/ DNA is the genetic material in chromosomes.
NOT common knowledge in Biology
Examples
1/ The symptoms of diabetes are polydipsia, polyphagia, and polyuria.
2/ Mice have 20 chromosomes.
Common misconceptions
1/ I only need to cite the source of direct quotations.
2/ I don’t need to cite information I get from the internet.
3/ When I summarize information in my own words, (i.e. paraphrase) it becomes my work, so
I don’t need to cite the information source.
4/ If the instructor tells us to use certain sources, he/she already knows where we got our
information, so I don’t need to cite.
But I didn’t know!!
Ignorance is not an excuse. It is your responsibility to become informed.
Did any of these reasons make your list?
1/ Plagiarism is stealing
2/ Plagiarism is cheating
3/ Plagiarism is disrespectful of the ideas of others
4/ Plagiarism is sloppy academic work
5/ Plagiarism displays a lack of original thought
6/ Plagiarism does not lead to learning
7/ Plagiarism displays a lack of academic integrity
What is not Plagiarism?
1/ A botched citation is not plagiarism, so long as it was clear that the student intended to cite.
(But it may be hard to know where to draw the line. Is a long quotation with a citation but no
quotation marks plagiarism?)
2/ A cut-and-paste paper is not plagiarism if the material is properly cited. (But it is a E−
paper!)
Who are the victims?
You
1/ Education on assimilating information about your chosen profession
2/ Opportunity to learn and refine technical-writing skills
3/ Habits learned and engrained that future employers will not appreciate
4/ Reputation among peers… who will soon choose group project teammates and will later
choose professional colleagues for collaboration on projects worth hundreds of thousands of
dollars
5/ Ability to obtain professional references from professors for future employment
Rationale for academic integrity
1/ When you copy you cheat yourself. You limit your own learning.
2/ The consequences are not worth the risks!
3/ It is only right to give credit to authors whose ideas you use
4/ Citing gives authority to the information you present
5/ Citing makes it possible for your readers to locate your source
6/ Education is not an “us vs. them” game! It’s about learning to learn!
7/ Cheating is unethical behavior
Plagiarism Prevention
The Internet has made plagiarism easier than ever before. From elementary schools to the
highest levels of academia, the ease of downloading and copying "untraceable" online
information has led to an epidemic of digital plagiarism. Our plagiarism prevention system
makes it easy to identify students who do submit unoriginal work, and also acts as a powerful
deterrent to stop plagiarism before it starts (www.turnitin.com).
COPYRIGHT
What is Copyright
1/ Copyright allows authors, musicians, artists, etc. to make money off of their labor.
2/ It prevents others from taking their work for free. It also prevents people from altering the
work without permission.
What can be protected?
Literary Works
Musical Works
Dramatic Works
Choreographic Work
Pictorial, Graphic, and Sculptural Works
Motion Pictures and AV
Sound Recordings
Architectural Works
What Does Copyright Give Rights Holders?
Right to reproduce the work.
Right to prepare derivative works.
Right to distribute copies for sale.
Right to perform AV works publicly.
Right to display musical and artistic works publicly.
Copyright is Automatic
1/ There is no need to include a copyright notice. (©, 2003). However, it is a good idea to do
so due to ignorance.
2/ The copyright is in force when the work is “fixed” which includes saving to disk or writing
it on paper.
What is „Intellectual Property“
1/ Rights in commercially valuable information permitting owner to control market for
products embodying the information
2/ Copyrights for artistic & literary works (including software)
3/ Patents for technological inventions (also including software)
4/ Trade secrets for commercially valuable secrets (e.g., source code, Coke formula)
5/ Trademarks (e.g., Coca Cola, Coke) to protect consumers against confusion
6/ Copyright and trademark law are the areas most likely to have international, civil-liberties
significance on the Internet, and, of the two, copyright law is more likely to be significant
than trademark law.
Possible Copyright Owners
Author/creator
Publisher
Employer (work for hire)
U.S. government
Public domain (older than 1923)
Copyright attaches to works of authorship
1/ copyright subsists in
- “original works of authorship” that are
- “fixed in any tangible medium of expression”
2/ Nothing more is required
- Registration of copyright is not required
- Copyright notice is not required
Originality
An “original” work is one that was
- independently created, and
- shows a “modicum of creativity”
Fixation
A work is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression” when it is embodied in a material object
of some kind – the pages of a book, a canvas, magnetic tape, a computer’s hard disk, a piano
roll, . . .
What is Fair Use
1/ Use of material for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
2/ Limitations apply. This includes consideration of the purpose, nature, amount and
substantiality, and the effect of the use on potential value of work.
3/ Non-profit educational purposes.
Public Domain
A work is considered in the public domain --available to anyone for any use -- if:
1/ the author has never claimed copyright, and
2/ has dedicated the work to the public domain.
3/ All government documents are in the public domain.
Literature:
1/ Academic Honor Code. New Jersey Institute of Technology.
http://www.njit.edu/academics/honorcode.php
2/ http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/wts/plagiarism.html
3/ Student Academic Handbook. University of Iowa.
http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/students/academic_handbook/ix.shtml
4/ Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
5/ Carroll, J. (November, 2000). Plagiarism: Is there a virtual solution? Teaching News.
November. http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsd/2_learntch/plagiarism.html
6/ Culwin, F. & Lancaster, T. (2001). Plagiarism, Prevention, Deterrence & Detection.
Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, South Bank University, U.K.
http://www.ilt.ac.uk/resources/Culwin-Lancaster.htm
7/ Culwin F. & Naylor J. (1995). Pragmatic Anti-Plagiarism. Proceedings 3rd All Ireland
Conference on the Teaching of Computing, Dublin.
8/ Evans, J. (2000). The new plagiarism in higher education: From selection to reflection.
Interactions 4 (2). http://www.warwick.ac.uk/ETS/interactions/Vol4no2/evans.htm
9/ Gibelman, M., Gelman, S. R., and Fast, J. (1999). The downside of cyberspace: Cheating
made easy. Journal of Social Work Education 35 (3).
10/ Plagiarism: What it is and how to recognize it and avoid it, Writing Tutorial Services,
Indiana University, 20th October, 2004
11/ How to Avoid Plagiarism (By Really Trying), Barbara L. Brown, 20th October, 2004