In this section, you'll learn...

Reusing a paper that you wrote for another class. Copying a paragraph from an article and changing every other word. Collaborating on a solo take-home exam. These are all examples of academic integrity gone wrong. In this module, we’ll discuss why these actions are violations of academic honesty, and why it matters.

Academic honesty encompasses actions that ensure acknowledgement of other people’s hard work and thought.

Different cultures and traditions often have distinct definitions of what behaviors constitute academic honesty. For example, in some cultures, it is considered a sign of respect to use the exact wording of a well-known thinker, and attribution is considered unnecessary. However, that is not an accepted practice for scholars in the United States. To learn more about cultural differences with regards to academic honesty, check out this book:

Because of these differing cultural expectations related to attribution, it is important to be cognizant of local expectations. Baylor University takes academic honesty very seriously. Click on the logo below to read Baylor's Honor Code policy.

Cheating is the most well-known academically dishonest behavior. But, cheating includes more than just copying a neighbor’s answers on an exam. Turning in someone else’s work as your own is also considered cheating.

Example: Ed Dante (a pseudonym) makes a living writing custom essays that unscrupulous students buy online. You can read his story at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Purchasing someone else’s work and turning it in as your own is cheating.

Falsifying results in studies or experiments is a serious breach of academic honesty.

People are sometimes tempted to make up results to get more attention or funding, but getting caught (which almost always happens, even if it is years later) has major consequences.

Example: A professor at the University of Washington falsified results in NIH-grant-funded AIDS research. He lost his job, had to withdraw his articles from prestigious journals, and received unfavorable news coverage. Also, other people who cited his work had to reexamine all of their results.

Misrepresentation might include inflating credentials, claiming that a study proves something that it does not, or leaving out inconvenient and/or contradictory results.

Example: An undergraduate at the University of Kansas claimed to be a researcher and promoted his (unfortunately incorrect) research on how much a Big Mac would cost if the U.S. raised minimum wage. His study was picked up by the Huffington Post, NY Times, and other major news outlets, who then had to publish retractions.

Getting answers from others is usually considered a form of cheating.

While it is fine to work in a team if your faculty member specifically allows for it, be sure to communicate with your faculty about guidelines on permissible collaboration (including how to attribute the contributions of others).

Example: In 2012, 125 Harvard students were investigated for working together on a take-home final exam. The only rule on the exam was not to work together. Almost half of those students were determined to have cheated, and forced to withdraw from school for a year.

One major problem with committing academically dishonest actions is that they are unfair to other people who do put in the work and the effort required for scholarship.

Many of these types of academic dishonesty include elements of plagiarism, including the Harvard cheating case and the ghostwritten papers.

We’ve already discussed unintentional plagiarism, but in this section we’ll discuss the hallmarks of plagiarism, why it’s easily discoverable, and how to avoid it.

In October 2013, Senator Rand Paul delivered a speech in Virginia, where he described the film Gattaca. Within a day, political commentator, Rachel Maddow, noticed striking and suspicious similarities between Paul’s speech and the Wikipedia article for Gattaca.

The text of the Wikipedia article at the time of the speech is on the left, and a video of the speech is on the right. How similar do you find the two?

Video of Rand Paul's Speech

After news of the Wikipedia plagiarism surfaced, Paul responded by calling his critics “footnote police” and “hacks and haters,” and by threatening to retire from politics and return to his medical practice. Paul has also been accused of plagiarism in other speeches and writing.

Another Example of Academic Dishonesty...

Neglecting to provide attribution can have disastrous results in political life. For example, plagiarism accusations derailed Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign. While many of the plagiarism claims against Biden came from his most recent campaign speeches, one of the plagiarism events happened decades earlier while Biden was in law school

You might not realize that re-using your own work for another class or in another context is actually a form of plagiarism, called self-plagiarism. If you take your old ideas and make them appear to be new, that is dishonest and will be considered plagiarism--just as if you copied the work of someone else.

Check out this article that goes covers some specific examples of self-plagiarism:

This is not to say that you can’t use information that exists in other places.

To avoid plagiarism, writers must rewrite the ideas in their own words (called paraphrasing) and cite the original source of the information.

Paraphrasing is similar to summarizing. Summaries only include the essential ideas of a work, while paraphrases include more details. Regardless of what you call it, you must cite the original source.

Depending on the circumstance, you may prefer to use an exact quote, surrounded by quotation marks. This is also acceptable, provided you give a full citation.

Need a compelling reason not to plagiarize? Plagiarized passages tend to be painfully obvious to your professors and others who read your work. And it’s this easy to get caught:

Faculty members can search the Internet for specific suspicious phrases in a paper. If you found the source, so can they. It can be as easy as a Google search.

There are a number of online services that scan papers and examine them for plagiarism (including close paraphrase). Faculty will often be more understanding about deadlines than you might expect. It’s better to request an extension or to take a lower grade than to face the consequences of academic dishonesty.

Baylor University takes academic honesty very seriously. Punishments for violation of the Honor Code policies range from a mark on your academic record to dismissal from the university.

And fallout from academically dishonest practices doesn’t end when you graduate. People who cheat or plagiarize can lose their jobs and/or their vocational licensures, face legal action, have graduate school admissions revoked, or be publicly called out for unethical behavior.

To participate fully in the scholarly conversation, it’s important to abide by the guidelines of ethical conduct known as academic honesty. Though it may seem easier to plagiarize or cheat, the consequences of such actions are dire, and can negatively impact or end your academic career.

But is citation always enough? The next section will discuss the additional nuance of copyright.