Academic integrity is defined by the International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) as “a commitment to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. By embracing these fundamental values, instructors, students, staff, and administrators create effective scholarly communities where integrity is a touchstone. Without them, the work of teachers, learners, and researchers loses value and credibility. More than merely abstract principles, the fundamental values serve to inform and improve ethical decision-making capacities and behavior. They enable academic communities to translate ideals into action.”[1]
The fundamental values for academic integrity[2] are,
- Honesty: We must be honest with ourselves and with our academic community, and develop trust.
- Trust: We must trust our work and trust others, thus make others trust our work.
- Fairness: We must be fair and acknowledge others’ efforts, such as those whose ideas we use in our works.
- Respect: We must respect ourselves and others in our academic community. Reciprocal respect will lead to the flourishment of knowledge, contribute to active learning and healthy communication, and prevent taking advantage of others.
- Responsibility: We must take responsibility for our actions, including our works, and be accountable. This will strengthen the bonds within our academic community. It is required both for our respect to ourselves and for the reciprocal respect between ourselves and others.
- Courage: “Being courageous means acting in accordance with one’s convictions”[1] and, as members of the academic community, we must have courage in order to trust our works and take the responsibility for our actions. “Only by exercising courage is it possible to create communities that are responsible, respectful, trustworthy, fair, and honest and strong enough to endure regardless of the circumstances they face.”[1]
In the department, students are expected to act in line with the values of academic integrity and strictly avoid forms of breaching academic integrity (also referred to as “academic misconduct” or “academic dishonesty”) such as plagiarism, recycling or resubmitting work, fabricating information, collusion, exam cheating, contract cheating, impersonation, and unapproved use of digital technologies including AI.[3] Students should all be aware that copying others’ work or presenting others’ words as their own, even when accidental, is plagiarism. This is a serious academic offense with weighty consequences.
(Academic Integrity at MIT: A Handbook for Students)
One of the most common instances of academic dishonesty is plagiarism. Academic plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work, ideas, or words without proper acknowledgment, presenting them as your own. This can include copying text, paraphrasing without credit, or using someone else’s research findings without citation. Plagiarism is considered a serious ethical violation in academia because it undermines the integrity of scholarly work and disrespects the original creator’s efforts.
Some common examples of plagiarism are given below:
- Direct copying: Using someone else’s exact words without quotation marks or proper citation.
- Paraphrasing without credit: Rewriting someone else’s ideas in your own words but not giving them credit.
- Self-plagiarism: Reusing your own previously submitted work without permission or acknowledgment.
- Mosaic plagiarism: Piecing together phrases and ideas from various sources and presenting them as your own.
- Accidental plagiarism: Forgetting to cite sources or misquoting them, even unintentionally.
It’s important to always give proper credit to the original authors to maintain academic integrity.
Some examples of self-plagiarism are given below:
- Reusing a previous paper: Submitting a paper you wrote for one class to another class without permission from both instructors.
- Duplicating research findings: Publishing the same research findings in multiple journals without disclosing that it’s the same work.
- Recycling content: Using substantial parts of a previously written article, book chapter, or report in a new publication without proper citation or acknowledgment.
- Republishing conference papers: Presenting a paper at a conference and then submitting the same paper to a journal without significant changes or proper citation.
- Reusing data: Using the same dataset in multiple studies without citing the original study where the data was first used.
Self-plagiarism can be just as serious as plagiarizing someone else’s work because it misleads readers about the originality of your contributions.
Resources on Academic Integrity:
• https://odek.itu.edu.tr/en/code-of-honor/ethics-in-university-life
• https://integrity.mit.edu/
• https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/academicintegrity/about
[1] International Center for Academic Integrity [ICAI]. (2021). The Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity (3rd ed.). https://academicintegrity.org/resources/fundamental-values
[2] A more detailed explanation of each of those fundamental values can be found in the publication mentioned in the previous footnote.
[3] For definitions of those behaviours undermining academic integrity, visit https://www.sydney.edu.au/students/academic-integrity/breaches.html
