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Academic Integrity

Avoiding Academic Misconduct

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism: The unacknowledged inclusion, whether intentional or unintentional in any form of assessment for a programme of study of material without due acknowledgement of its original source.

It may include but is not limited to the following:

  • Presenting in your own name, work authored by a third party, such as other students, friends or family (with or without permission), or work purchased through any source or given to you by a third party, including organisations such as essay mills. The original source may be in written form or in any other media (for example, audio or video);
  • Presenting ideas, theories, concepts, methodologies or data (including research data) from the work of another without due acknowledgement;
  •  Presenting text, digital work (e.g. computer code or programs), video recordings or images copied with only minor changes from sources such as the internet, books, journals or any other media, without due acknowledgement;
  • Paraphrasing (i.e., putting a passage or idea from another source into your own words), without due acknowledgement of the source;
  • Failing to include appropriate citation of all original sources;
  • Representing collaborative work as solely your own;
  • Presenting work for an assignment which has also been submitted (in part or whole) for another assignment at RCSI or another institution (i.e. self-plagiarism). (RCSI AI Policy)

How to Avoid Plagiarism

  1. Keep track of the sources you consult in your research.
  2. Paraphrasing or quoting from your sources (by using a paraphrasing tool and adding your own ideas)
  3. Crediting the original author in an in-text citation and in your reference list
  4. Use Turnitin before you submit

Check out the Reference guide for further help.

 

https://youtu.be/PVC_bwpvKcM

 

Contract cheating: is an act of engaging another student, person, or service to complete some or all of an assessment task on the student’s behalf and typically involves financial or other payment in return for the work.

How to Avoid Contract Cheating:

Plan out your schedule - time crunches can lead to increased pressures and bad choices

Reach out to experts in your university who can help – look at your university website, and talk to your professor, instructor, or librarian about resources that might help.

 

This includes the materials that you submitted to the university when you applied for your program. If you are found to have changed, omitted, or forged any of those documents, your offer of admission can be revoked (even if you have begun your program already). 

When you make something up, falsely represent facts or previous accounts, or alter or manipulate something to support your position or idea, you are being dishonest or unethical.

How to avoid Falsification

  • Complete assignments independently unless your instructors indicate otherwise. Clarify what’s expected of you when you’re working on a group project.
  • Plan ahead. Waiting until the last minute to complete an assignment will make you feel rushed and out of control. Good time management allows you to prepare adequately and, in case you have questions, contact your instructor for clarification.
  • Learn how to cite properly. If you paraphrase or summarize what someone else said, you still have to attribute this information to them.

 

Self-plagiarism is submitting the same piece of work for more than one course without the instructor’s permission. You are not allowed to receive course credit for the same work twice. This means that you can’t use an essay from a course you took last year in one of your current courses, even if the topic is the same.

How to Avoid Self-plagiarism

  • Always properly cite your previously published material in new work.
  • Make sure that any of your previously published text or data is used to support novel material and arguments in new work. There must be enough original content to justify a new publication.
  • Publish your findings as a cohesive whole whenever possible to avoid data fragmentation, unless there are good reasons for doing this.
  • Always disclose to journal editors when the work you are submitting contains previously published material. (Charlesworth Author Service,2023)

This includes having another person show up to write a test or exam in your place (or being the person who writes the test in someone else’s place), but it also includes having someone else write an online test for you (or taking an online test for someone else).

How to Avoid it

Prepare and plan your time in advance, so your work is not done at the last minute.

Take notes during classes and re-read them to make sure they will make sense later.

Take advantage of advice from your teachers and tutors.

If you don't understand, ask until you do. It is a sign of strength to ask for help. (NZQA, 2023)

 

 

Collusion occurs when a student, without the authorization of the academic staff:

  • Allows others to copy their work, or share questions or answers to an assessment task
  • Allows another person or entity to produce or edit their work, except where Disability Support Services has approved the use of a scribe
  • Produces or edits work for another student

How to avoid it

  • If you are writing an assignment – unless you have specifically been told to work collaboratively with other students on a group project - you should not let anyone else see your work apart from a tutor.
  • You should avoid getting other students to proof read your work (for spelling mistakes/grammatical errors), as this creates complications regarding ‘collusion’. Even the act of sharing your work in this way, even with good intentions, can be an academic misconduct breach in its own right if another student copies it. (City Student Union, 2023)

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