Academic Honesty & Plagiarism Information for Staff
Academic Integrity
Academic integrity is a quality associated with high standards of scholarship and is a responsibility of both staff and students. Academic staff should provide examples of good practice in academic integrity by acknowledging appropriately the works, designs, ideas and words of others in their teaching and research. Providing appropriate examples of assessment work that display good practice in using citations, references and acknowledgements and providing opportunities for students to practise their use will assist in developing academic skills and in reducing the instances of plagiarism.
The University is committed to assisting staff and students in maintaining high standards of academic integrity by implementing highly visible procedures associated with educational opportunities and detection. Staff can also assist by employing approaches to assessment that minimise the possibility for students to submit plagiarised material.
University Policy on Academic Honesty & Plagiarism
The University of Adelaide's Academic Honesty Policy includes the issues associated with plagiarism, the responsibilities of the Faculty/School/Department, the responsibilities of staff and students, as well as the procedures and penalties for plagiarism.
- Academic Honesty Policy (includes Academic Dishonesty Procedures)
Academic Honesty & Plagiarism Information for Students
Information and resources for students can be found on the Writing Centre website.
Contacts
Ms Ursula McGowan, Ph: 831 34745, ursula.mcgowan@adelaide.edu.au
Dr Chad Habel, Ph: 831 33019, chad.habel@adelaide.edu.au
University of Adelaide & Turnitin
The University of Adelaide has a University-wide licence to access Turnitin, which is available as a tool within MyUni.
What is Turnitin?
Turnitin is a totally web-based tool which provides an online plagiarism prevention service for both educators and learners. For further information visit http://turnitin.com
Whilst effective to help identify suspected individual cases of plagiarism, or as a deterrent, Turnitin plagiarism prevention is even more effective when used as an educational tool.
Digital versions of papers submitted to the Turnitin web site are compared against:
- billions of documents online
- Turnitin's local databases of submitted student papers
Matching text is detailed in an Originality Report which includes direct source comparison.
Originality Reports provide a summary of the matching text found in a submitted paper. The colour of the report icon (blue, green, orange, yellow, red) indicates the overall similarity index of the paper, based on how much matching text Turnitin finds.
Originality Reports are tools to help users find sources that contain similar text to submitted papers. The decision on whether or not the work is plagiarised still needs to be made by the educator, and only after careful examination of both the submitted paper and the suspect sources.
Australian Legal Opinion
For Australian institutions, Turnitin has obtained a legal opinion from Blake Dawson Waldron, one of Australia's leading international law firms, to ensure that our use of student work complies with Australian copyright and privacy laws.
Go to http://pages.turnitin.com/rs/iparadigms/images/australian_legal.pdf to view this legal opinion.
Who Can Use Turnitin?
University of Adelaide staff (instructors) can use Turnitin through MyUni. Instructors can submit student papers for checking.
University of Adelaide students can use Turnitin through MyUni. Students can submit papers, either as a course requirement or for personal checking. Instructors will need to set up a Turnitin assignment for students to gain access to the tool.
How to Use Turnitin
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Contact
Online Development, email online@adelaide.edu.au
Assessment cover sheets
Schools/Departments should provide an 'Assessment Cover Sheet' that requires the signature of the student declaring that all cited works have been clearly identified and acknowledged. For students submitting work electronically, a suitable digital version of an 'Assessment Cover Sheet' should be used.
Avoiding Plagiarism: Achieving academic writing
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/articulate/avoidingPlagiarism/player.html
This learning module was prepared by Ursula McGowan and Kerry O'Regan, CLPD, University of Adelaide, 2008. It is an Articulate presentation and requires your browser to have a Flash Player plug-in installed.
Research - Writing
Plagiarism Poster
- Quality Assurance in detecting and preventing plagiarism: A mainstream educative strategy, ISL Symposium, Birmingham, 2004.
Plagiarism Framework: Student as Apprentice Researcher
- This framework is designed to help academic staff in examining the cultural and language factors that may limit the academic expression by a student at any given stage of their transition into university, and in forming realistic expectations of the likely levels of performance on written assignments.
www.adelaide.edu.au/learning/staff/plagiarism/downloads/06_UM_plagiarism_framework.pdf
University of Adelaide Library
- The Barr Smith Library provides links to referencing style guides and useful information on how and when to use references in their LibGuide on Academic Writing and referencing Style Guides.
Recent Papers on Plagiarism
- McGowan, U. (2010) Re-defining academic teaching practice in terms of research apprenticeship. In M. Devlin, J. Nagy & A. Lichtenberg (eds.) Reshaping Higher Education. Proceedings of the HERDSA Conference, Melbourne 6-9 July. Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia, Inc. (refereed)
- McGowan, U. (2009) Research Apprenticeship: Is this the answer to inadvertent plagiarism in undergraduate students' writings? Proceedings of the 4th Asia-Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity. Wollongong, September 29-30 http://ro.uow.edu.au/apcei/09/papers/34/ Accessed 16/3/10
- McGowan, U. (2008b) Higher education – for what – when students are linguistically outside their 'zone of proximal development'?. In: Student Learning for what? Proceedings of the 15th Improving Student Learning Symposium. Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, 3–5 September 2007.
- McGowan, U. (2008a) International Students: A conceptual framework for dealing with unintentional plagiarism. In: Tim S. Roberts (ed.) Student Plagiarism in an Online World: Problems and Solutions. Information Science Reference, Hershey, New York, pp. 92-107. NB: This book is available online through the University of Adelaide Barr Smith Library http://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/
- McGowan, U. (2007) Plugging a hole in holistic institutional approaches to plagiarism: A focus on research. In: Tracey Bretag et al. Proceedings of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity. Adelaide, December 6-7 (refereed) http://www.unisa.edu.au/educationalintegrity/conference/proceedings.asp
- McGowan, U. (2005) Does educational integrity mean teaching students NOT to 'use their own words'? International Journal for Educational Integrity1(1) (refereed) http://www.ojs.unisa.edu.au/index.php/IJEI/article/view/16/6
- McGowan, U. (2000). Can thesis writing be taught generically? Supporting self-help in post-graduates. Paper presented Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference, Making Ends Meet. Adelaide, 13 & 14 April http://www.qpr.edu.au/papersdatabase.php?orderBy=author&byYear=2000
Links to other external web resources
- Asia Pacific Forum on Educational Integrity (APFEI)
http://apfei.edu.au/
- ALTC Academic Integrity Standards Project
http://apfei.edu.au/altc
- ACODE Audit of Academic Integrity and Plagiarism Issues in Australia and New Zealand.
http://www.tlc.murdoch.edu.au/project/acode/index.html
- Plagiarism - A good practice guide
by Jude Carroll and John Appleton. This is a JISC - Joint Information Systems Committee resource.
- Deterring plagiarism in Higher Education
Oxford Centre for Language and Learning Development, Oxford Brooks University
