What is Academic Integrity?

The European Network for Academic Integrity (ENAI) have defined academic integrity as:

"Compliance with ethical and professional principles, standards and practices and consistent system of values, that serves as guidance for making decisions and taking actions in education, research and scholarship."

The National Academic Integrity of Network (NAIN) have also adopted this definition.

Why is Academic Integrity Important?

  • Academic integrity supports learning opportunities. Shortcut solutions like plagiarism, contract cheating, and utilising Generative Artificial Intelligence take away learning opportunities for students.
  • Accurate assessment of student learning is dependent on academic integrity. When student answers aren’t their own, it is impossible for educators to get an accurate assessment of learning and to provide feedback or make informed changes to a teaching curriculum.
  • Respect for learning starts with academic integrity. Academic misconduct disrespects the academic work of others and breaks down trust. 
  • Academic integrity can be an indicator of future workplace behavior. The academic integrity journey must be firmly established to ensure a lifetime of integrity.
  • Scandals can affect an institution’s academic reputation and erode the value of a degree. If students are not learning course material, then their foundation of knowledge does not reflect a thorough education– in fields relating to healthcare, science and engineering, that can have serious life and death consequences. 

The International Centre for Academic Integrity (ICAI) have identified six values for Academic Integrity that relate to the individual student, the individual academic and the University as an institution


What is Academic Misconduct?

Academic Misconduct can be defined as:

"Morally culpable behaviours perpetrated by individuals or institutions that transgress ethical standards held in common between other individuals and/ or groups in institutions of education, research, or scholarship. 

Academic misconduct includes all actions which contravene academic integrity. These include breaches of examination regulations, cheating, plagiarism, impersonation, purchase of examination material, data falsification and other acts which dishonestly use information to gain academic credit."

What are Examples of Academic Misconduct?

NAIN have provided a comprehensive list of activities that constitute academic misconduct in their publication 'Academic Integrity: National Principles and Common Terms'.

The UL policy for addressing academic cheating is covered under Section 6 of the Handbook of Academic Regulations and Procedures (available on UL Policy Hub), under the Code of Conduct, 1.5 (l) where a breach of the assessment regulations or engaging in academic cheating in any form whatsoever is considered a major offence. From a student perspective, there is information in both the UL Student Charter (under Integrity, page 6) that states that: The University expects students not to plagiarise (i.e., present another’s ideas or writings as their own), fabricate or falsify data, commission others to complete assessments or engage in academic cheating in any form whatsoever.

The current procedure for managing academic cheating is described in Section 4.1.4 of the Handbook of Academic Regulations and Procedures.

The Academic Integrity Unit is currently leading a project to develop an academic integrity policy and procedures for managing academic misconduct. 

Look out for updates on these policies and procedures in the coming months.

What is Plagiarism?

Presenting work / ideas taken from other sources without proper acknowledgement. ‘Plagiarism, i.e. the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit, including those obtained through confidential review of other’s research proposals and manuscripts.


What is Auto-Plagiarism?

Instead of creating an original piece of work, the author adds insignificant additional data and/ or information to his/ her previously published work and changes title, modifies aim of the study, and recalculates results. Also, it is the omission of cross-citation to own previous publications.


What is Self-Plagiarism?

This is recycling or borrowing content from author’s own previous work without citation. Self-plagiarism is the use of one’s own previous work in another context without appropriate citation. Related to self-plagiarism is the practice of data fragmentation or salami slicing where the author(s) separate aspects of a study and publishes it as more than one publication. Writers should recycle their own material carefully and sparingly.

ENAI defines common knowledge as:

Factual ‘information that is readily available from a number of sources or so well-known that its sources do not have to be cited’

 

Please watch the following You Tube clip which provides further information on common knowledge:

What is Common Knowledge?

A re-statement of notions, opinions, ideas or text in own words preserving their essence that does not amount to verbatim or near-verbatim copying of the respective source, with a proper acknowledgement of the original source.


What is Poor Paraphrasing?

Poor paraphrasing is another way plagiarism can be present in an author's writing. Poor paraphrasing is usually when an author replaces just a word or two of a source's phrasing with synonyms. This type of paraphrasing does not show enough understanding and engagement with the text. Instead, the author needs to strive to take ideas and information and place them in his or her own words. Two common characteristics of incorrect paraphrasing includes when the paraphrased version:

  1. Has the same sentence structure as the original and
  2. Has key words from the original that the author simply rearranged or replaced.

Citing and referencing correctly is an important part of academic writing and will help you to uphold academic integrity.  You should take time to familiarise yourself with the citing and referencing expectations for all assignments that you submit.

The Library has an online Guide to Referencing that you can consult to familiarise yourself with the basics of referencing and why it is important.

You may choose to use Reference Management Software when preparing your citations and references although the onus is on you, the learner, to ensure that the citations and references are correctly presented.

More information on Reference Management Software can be found at: Introduction - Referencing & Citation Tools - LibGuides at Glucksman Library University of Limerick (ul.ie)


Support with Citations and References

The Glucksman Library at University of Limerick offers a wide range of supports to help you with citing and referencing. 

You can review: Introduction to Referencing - Cite It Right: Guide to Harvard Referencing Style - LibGuides at Glucksman Library University of Limerick (ul.ie) 

You can also book in-person or online sessions.

You might be required to submit many of your assignments through Turnitin. This software is widely used within the Higher Education sector internationally. It is user friendly for both instructors and students as feedback can be provided in written or oral form and marking rubrics can be integrated into the feedback. 

Similarity Score

A typical submission made to an assignment in Turnitin generates a Similarity Report. The similarity score is a percentage of a paper's content that matches to Turnitin's databases; it is not an assessment of whether the paper includes plagiarised material. Turnitin does not check for plagiarism in a piece of work. Instead, we will check a student's work against our databases, and if there are instances where a student's writing is similar to, or matches against, one of our sources, we will bring this to the instructor's attention for review.

There is no specific similarity score that acts as a threshold for further investigation by the instructor.

For example: Your submission might generate a Similarity Score of 20% but might not be problematic if you were required to submit using a specific template with pre-determined headings, therefore matching your classmates and perhaps students submitting work in previous years. A different assignment submitted for a different programme of study might also generate a Similarity Score of 20%, however, this might be problematic if there are paragraphs of text taken directly from a source or a number of sources. 

Turnitin have produced a guide on Understanding the Turnitin Similarity Score which might be of further assistance.

The Academic Integrity Unit have a multi-layered approach to upholding academic integrity. Access to commercial websites and file sharing sites which offer cheating services to learners, is one such approach that has been adopted to uphold academic integrity. Such websites are blocked on the UL network. This is in keeping with the NAIN Academic Integrity Guidelines (2019), Section 3.2.16.  Lists of these blocked sites are regularly circulated by QQI and are reviewed by the UL Academic Integrity Unit. This measure also supports the Qualifications and Quality Assurance (Education and Training) (Amendment) Act 2019, Section 15.

 If you have any questions, please contact academicintegrity@ul.ie