The strict moral code and practice of ethics in academia is known as academic integrity. This policy includes a strict avoidance of such illicit behaviors as plagiarism and cheating of any sort. The maintaining of academic integrity has to do with keeping standards to a minimum level, engaging in honest and forthright behavior. This includes showing moral rigor in the process of research and publishing of academic works. Academic integrity is the cornerstone of responsibility that each student is required to adhere to during their time as a student.
The importance of academic integrity is not just to prevent the student from being expelled or otherwise punished during their postsecondary education. It is also to insure that they learn the necessary skills they need in order to become a functional member of society. This can also allow the student a measure of pride in a job well done and better prepare them for a place in the workforce. In order to be judged fairly and without an existing bias it is important for any student to learn and adhere to the rules of their school so that they can earn a quality education (Kolb, Longest, & Singer, 2015).
There are unfortunate and lamentable actions taken by students that undermine such responsibility and circumvent academic integrity. Cheating of any type, particularly plagiarism goes against all moral and ethical boundaries. Plagiarism is the act of taking a piece of writing, a song, or even an idea and passing it off as one’s own work rather than giving credit where it is due. This highly unethical practice is quite prevalent in many schools (Stuhmcke, Booth, & Wangmann, 2015), and has become an issue serious enough to warrant several consequences, not the least of which is expulsion from one’s school.
There are several types of plagiarism, such as direct plagiarism, which is a word for word
account of the information that a student has researched, without any citations to explain where
the facts came from. This type of plagiarism is quite common and is easily checked by various programs that have been designed to detect similarities between essays and research papers (Riehmann, Potthast, Stein, & Froehlich, 2015). Mosaic plagiarism is quite common as well. This entails the taking and piecing together of bits of information from many different sources without adding proper citations to tell where the core material came from. While this type of plagiarism is harder to detect, it is often the lack of citations in regards to the information given that allows this to be detected.
Accidental plagiarism can ruin one’s academic career through simple mistakes that are committed by the student. A source might be left out, a citation might be missed, and eventually it becomes an unintentionally plagiarized project. The main disadvantage in detecting this type of plagiarism is that it is far too easy for students to “pretend” that they left something out on accident. As plagiarism is a very serious offense, the accusations levied must be accurate and certain, or a teacher can risk ruining a good student’s academic career over an honest mistake.
Self-plagiarism is quite deliberate like the Mosaic and Direct approaches. It involves piecing together one’s old works in order to create a new body of work. This is usually done without the express permission of their professors, and is thus a little harder to detect. Not many people are found guilty of this type of plagiarism as at times their own works are deemed either inadequate or are discarded after being graded.
Academic integrity is vital to the career of any student, and is meant to remain intact. By
plagiarizing the work of others a student not only shows disrespect to the source, but to their own
efforts as well. By keeping one’s integrity it is possible to attain a brighter and much more
satisfying future. No matter how successful one plagiarizes a piece of work, they will always be
caught one way or another.
References
Kolb, K.H., Longest, K.C., & Singer, A.J. (2015). Choosing Not to Cheat: A Framework to Assess Students’ Rationales for Abiding by Academic Integrity Policies. International
Riehmann, P., Potthast, M., Stein, B., & Froehlich, B. (2015). Visual Assent of Assumed
Plagiarism Cases. Computer Graphics Forum, 34(3): 61-70.
Stuhmcke, A., Booth, T., & Wangmann, J. (2015). The illusory dichotomy of plagiarism.
