Guide To Academic Integrity

FAQs

What is academic integrity?

Academic integrity is honest and responsible scholarship. As a university student, you are expected to submit original work and give credit to other peoples' ideas. Maintaining your academic integrity involves:

• Creating and expressing your own ideas in course work
• Acknowledging all sources of information
• Completing assignments independently or acknowledging collaboration
• Accurately reporting results when conducting your own research or with respect to labs
• Honesty during examinations

Learn more with our Interactive Online Tutorial!

How does it impact me?

Academic integrity is the foundation of university success. Learning how to express original ideas, cite sources, work independently, and report results accurately and honestly are skills that carry you beyond university to serve you in the workforce. Academic dishonesty not only cheats you of valuable learning experiences, but can result in a failing grade on assignments, a mark on your transcripts, or even expulsion from the university. For 'real life' examples of this, check out the Annual Report on Student Discipline!

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is using another person's ideas without giving credit and is considered intellectual theft. If you submit or present the oral or written work of someone else you are guilty of plagiarism. Plagiarism may be:

Accidental or Unintentional

You may not even know that you're plagiarizing. Make sure you understand the difference between quoting and paraphrasing, as well as the proper way to cite material.

Blatant

This time you're well aware of what you're doing. Purposefully using someone else's ideas or work without proper acknowledgment is plagiarism. This includes turning in borrowed or bought research papers as your own.

Self

It's your own work so you should be able to do what you want with it, right? Wrong. Handing in the same term paper (or substantially the same term paper) for two courses without getting permission from your instructor is plagiarism.

Do professors really check for plagiarism?

YES! Instructors often keep copies of previous assignments for reference. In addition, UBC subscribes to TurnItIn.com, an online service that scans essay and term papers to check for material copied from web sites or purchased from paper mills (such as cheater.com), published works, or previously submitted essays.

For more information see TurnItIn.com@UBC.

Tips for Avoiding Plagiarism

1. Get started early to avoid panic situations which might tempt you to plagiarize. Try the Assignment Calculator to help you manage your research and writing time.

2. Take careful notes on what you read and where you found the ideas. Use Refworks to keep track of your sources as you go along.

3. Acknowledge ALL Sources from which you use ideas. This includes books, journal articles, websites, e-mail communication, listserv, film, videos, audio recordings, etc.

4. Check out some of the really nifty tools on The Learning Commons site!

5. Always cite:

• Direct quotations taken from sources - place quotation marks “” around direct quotes as you write them down, to remember which are direct quotes and which are not
• Paraphrased ideas and opinions taken from someone else's work.
• Summaries of ideas taken from someone else's work
• Factual information, including statistics or other data – with the exception of anything that is considered common knowledge (i.e. well known facts like "British Columbia is a province in Canada").
• Different disciplines use different style guides, so check with your instructor to make sure you are using the right one. Some of the most common style guides are MLA , APA and Turabian/Chicago

6. When reviewing your paper, ask yourself :

• Is the idea or argument presented mine?
• Are the words my own?
• Can my work be clearly distinguished from the work of others?

Interactive Tutorials

• View our interactive flash animation tutorial on Academic Integrity
• The Learning Commons: How much do you know about academic integrity?
• UBC Okanagan Library Academic Integrity Tutorial
• Harvard's Principles of Paraphrasing Tutorial