5.5 What is Academic Integrity?

Before we talk about how to cite, let’s take a minute to think about the stakes. Unfortunately, citation an area where the stakes are high during your university career. As a student, you’re expected to learn by making mistakes. But unfortunately, citation mistakes can be costly. In this chapter, we’re going to avoid taking a punishing approach to source use, but we need to be aware that plagiarism or citation errors can have heavy consequences for students who commit what are called academic integrity violations.

Different universities have different definitions. Here is the definition we (BCOM301) use in this course:

All University, Robbins College of Business and Entrepreneurship, and Department Business Studies rules apply to this course. Consult appropriate FHSU publications or personnel for details. WARNING! Submitting another’s (another human or AI-generated content) work as your own uncited, unsanctioned collaboration on assignments, using work you completed for another class, fabricating content, and plagiarism (deliberate or unintentional) of other texts is cheating and violates the Academic Honesty policy of this University at all levels.  It may result in a failing grade for the work, a “U” for the course, and, if warranted, expulsion from FHSU, as explained in the University policy on Academic Honesty. Cooperative study among students provides a positive learning experience for all, but copying the work of others or allowing one’s work to be copied is unethical and not allowed.

AI writing tools may be used to edit student work to improve professionalism and clarity but should not be used to generate written prose for assignment submission. Unless given permission to use AI tools for content generation for a class exercise, each student is expected to complete each assignment without substantive assistance from others, including AI. Unethical or irresponsible use of AI will be subject to the FHSU Academic Honesty Policy and may result in a 0 for the assignment, failure of the course, and, if warranted, expulsion from FHSU.  The concepts of ethical authorship with AI and the responsible use of AI are discussed in the course.

In other words, you must take full responsibility for your work, acknowledge your own efforts, and acknowledge the contributions of others’ efforts. Working/ writing with integrity requires accurately representing what you contributed as well as acknowledging how others have influenced your work. When you are a student, an accurate representation of your knowledge is important because it will allow both you and your professors to know the extent to which you have developed as a scholar.

It’s worth noting that other cultures have different – equally valid – definitions of academic integrity. By making you aware of what we mean by academic integrity in this context, you can be aware of the expectations that are being placed on you.

What Is Plagiarism?

Let’s take a look at a common definition of plagiarism. This one comes from Fort Hays State University Judicial Affairs Office:

Plagiarism, taking someone else’s intellectual work and presenting it as one’s own (which covers published and unpublished sources). Using another’s term paper as one’s own, handing in a paper purchased from an individual or agency, submitting papers from living group, club or organization files, or using another’s computer program or document are all examples of plagiarism. Standards of attribution and acknowledgment of literary indebtedness are set by each discipline.

Plagiarism can be intentional (knowingly using someone else’s work and presenting it as your own) or unintentional (inaccurately or inadequately citing ideas and words from a source). It may be impossible for your professor to determine whether plagiarized work was intentional or unintentional.

While academic integrity calls for work resulting from your own effort, scholarship requires that you learn from others. So in the world of “academic scholarship” you are actually expected to learn new things from others AND come to new insights on your own. There is an implicit understanding that as a student you will be both using other’s knowledge as well as your own insights to create new scholarship. To do this in a way that meets academic integrity standards you must acknowledge the part of your work that develops from others’ efforts. You do this by citing the work of others. You plagiarize when you fail to acknowledge the work of others and do not follow appropriate citation guidelines.