Academic Integrity and Plagiarism Research Paper
This essay will first define academic integrity and proceed to explain the various ways to breach the integrity of academic writing before identifying and explaining four different types of plagiarisms and lastly this essay will use the Leeds City College student handbook and the University of Leeds to explain the consequences of breaching the academic integrity.
Academic integrity is a socially accepted convention of those who pursue higher education or certain fields of study. (LTU, n.d.) Within academic integrity are six core values, and these values are the pillar stones of academic learning, and when these are put in practice, they effectively become the cornerstone of learning without them countless past and future works would lose their credibility and the value of such work would be lowered. (ICAI, 2021) The six core values are honesty, trust, accuracy, respect, responsibility, and courage. These refer to being honest which ideas are yours and which are from other, trust that everyone will be treated fairly and equal, making sure your work is accurate and there are no errors, upholding your responsibility to your work and your peers and the courage to be brave, taking risks which may result in failure and resisting temptations.
In academic integrity there is a multitude of ways one could breach the integrity some examples of these are submitting unfinished working in order to avoid being capped at as pass, submitting a piece of work which has been submitted by two or more students working on a single assessment, cheating by gaining an unfair advantage by either giving or taking information relevant to the assignment or gaining unauthorised access to exam papers or controlled assignments and malicious interference unwanted or unaccepted behaviour directed towards members of staff or peers which is designed to create a hostile or intimidating environment. (UOC, n.d; SPC, n.d; UOC, n.d)
A common type of breach in academic integrity is plagiarism the act of stealing or copying work of others and presenting it as your own work without their consent or acknowledgment (UOO n.d.) There are many types of plagiarism such as direct plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, self-plagiarism and accidental plagiarism. Direct plagiarism copying word for word effectively copying and pasting another's work and ideas and presenting these as your own (Streefkerk, 2019.). Mosaic plagiarism is similar to direct plagiarism expect instead of copying word for word you make subtle changes to the sentence or paragraph changing the first and last words or using synonyms and also stitching different pieces of texts to create a new text and lastly self-plagiarism is not illegal but is highly frowned upon in the academic community by using your own past work on current work or presenting ideas, data or research you have previously submitted or published.
The consequences of breaching academic integrity can have a significant impact on someone but the outcomes can vary depending on the circumstances of the person breaching them and the policy of the institution or tutor. At Leeds City College consequences are split into two stages if it is a first-time offence the tutor may invoke the right to reject the assignment and ask for it to be resubmitted and the work will be capped to a pass for more serious offences the student may have the grade withheld entirely or they may receive exclusion. (LCC, 2021/2022) At university the consequence of malpractice is severe but also vary depending on the type of malpractice the consequences can range from modules being capped at a pass to repeating the entire module capped at zero, 20, 30 or pass marks to repeating the entire year or full exclusion from the university. (UOL, 2017)
In conclusion this essay has defined academic integrity and explained the different types of ways academic integrity can be breached furthermore it has described and defined four different types of plagiarism and lastly the consequences for breaching academic integrity.
