Academic Plagiarism and Integrity: Building Professionalism

This essay explores the critical concepts of academic plagiarism and academic integrity, emphasizing their significance in shaping a student's professional journey. It defines plagiarism, differentiating between accidental, incidental, and self-plagiarism, and underscores its detrimental impact. The essay highlights the importance of academic integrity, portraying it as essential for building trust, fostering leadership qualities, and establishing professional behavior. It delves into the practical implications of integrity in business, emphasizing the need for commitment, trust-building, and honesty. Furthermore, the essay addresses the causes of academic dishonesty and proposes preventative measures, such as avoiding shortcuts, cultivating independent decision-making, and prioritizing integrity. The conclusion reiterates the need to eliminate plagiarism and promote honesty to fortify academic and professional lives.

Academic Plagiarism and Academic Integrity

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Academic Plagiarism.......................................................................................................................1
Academic Integrity..........................................................................................................................2
Importance of Academic Integrity in Professional life....................................................................2
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

Introduction
Academic plagiarism and integrity are the very important terms in every students life to
build up their profession life. In this article, the discussion is all about plagiarism and integrity
and the how they the academic integrity plays an important role in making the students life
secure and also building up their professional life easier for lifetime.
Academic Plagiarism
Plagiarism is a term which simple defines writing the other's work in own words in terms of any
field like literature, music etc., or in other words, it is just like crime (Babelli, Chandratilake and
Roff, 2015). There are many types of plagiarism but here the discussion is all about academic
plagiarism. So, the types of Academic Plagiarism are as follows -
Accidental Plagiarism
This type of Plagiarism is generally done by graduate students while doing and research
work related to projects and copying the research materially. This results in inappropriate
paraphrasing
that matches the already researched work. This creates the wrong impression and shows the
unprofessional behaviour of the students.
Incidental Plagiarism
This is generally common in authors writing any book and copy the matter from the other books
and change the ownership of the book and publish it (DeLoughery, 2018). This can be generally
seen in the Mathematics books in which the authors take the materials from the already running
and famous books and publish by their own name but this is the wrong practice and just
increasing the quantity but not working on qualitative work.
Self-Plagiarism
Self-plagiarism occurs when the students submit their own previous work or copy the
previous students data to the professors without taking their permission. The pass out students
also gave their assignments to the juniors but the juniors copy the material from them and submit
to their concerned faculties to get the marks.
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Academic Integrity
Academic integrity refers to bring the honesty in doing the work when no one is supervising.
This shows the integrity, professionalism, trust and possibility towards own work and research
(Kam, Hue and Cheung, 2018). Academic integrity plays an important in every academic stages
like when the child starts the school journey, complete the high school and then taking the step
towards the college or doing any research with integrity.
Importance of Academic Integrity in Professional life
The Academic integrity is important in every aspect. Academic integrity plays an important
role in developing the good leadership quality because today's era is of the start-up and there are
so many successful start-up are running across the world and the integrity brings out the good
leader from the students who sees their future in business and wants to convert their aspiration
into goal. Firstly, gaining the trust is very important to exists in this world and this can be done
by doing the work with dedication and integrity (Shin, Aiken and Aleccia, 2017). Recruiters also
hire the employees by showing the trust and in expect the work that is to done with full integrity.
Professional behaviour is very important in academic, job and as well as in the business scenario.
In terms of business, the leadership quality is important which demands integrity and honesty
and the most important “utmost good faith”.
Here are some of the major points that shows the quality that every leader should have -
Meet the commitments
While handling the business, when some commitments are made then the it is
responsibility of the leader to complete the commitments otherwise business can lose their
integrity or any products which is not able to complete the needs of customers then also the
company loose the integrity and after that no reason or excuses can work.
Build and maintain trust
Trust and integrity are the two pillars that helps in maintaining the long term relationship with
the customers (Singh and Remenyi, 2016). If the leader do not build this two pillars, then they
will lose the public trust.
Honesty
This is the term which decides the future of any business. If any business is not able to
work with honesty, then this results in ending of the business.
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Academic Dishonesty and its causes
Good students are always honest towards themselves, their teachers who is giving the
guidance to get success in the life and the community. Universities has also starts giving
attention towards students to aware them for the academic integrity to make them future ready.
The dishonesty towards the work in the student life continuous for the life time if the students do
not take care or focus on themselves (Sutherland-Smith, 2016). The professional life also get dis-
balanced if the students do not show integrity towards their work.
Academic dishonesty also gives birth to the corruption and continues with life time. In
today's tough and competitive era, students are not able to balance their life they starts finding
the shortcuts for to complete the work and wants the success in a very short time and this starts
bringing the dishonesty in personal and professional life and did not get success in their life.
There are so many start-up ideas are generating day by day and getting the better response
because of their integrity and dedication towards their work (Sutherland-Smith, 2016). But the
academic dishonesty can be avoided by taking some important steps which are as follows -
1. Avoid taking help and shortcuts in the life to complete the short term goals because this
can affect the present as well as future life also.
2. Can take their own decisions independently this helps in building their professional life.
3. Creation of own thoughts
4. Work with integrity and honesty that helps in making and building the trust for their
colleagues.
Doing the smart work is the different thing but doing the same work smartly with honesty
and integrity helps in building the trust for the long time and this also helps in building their
professional life strong and balanced.
Conclusion
The plagiarism is the major cause that is to be nullified because it is just as a disaster that
ruins the students life. Students should be honest toward their work to build-up the trust among
the colleagues and this can integrate their academic and professional life together also helps in
making their business life stronger for the longer term.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Babelli, S., Chandratilake, M. and Roff, S., 2015. Recommended sanctions for lapses in
professionalism by student and faculty respondents to Dundee Polyprofessionalism
Inventory I: Academic Integrity in one medical school in Saudi Arabia. Medical
teacher. 37(2). pp.162-167.
DeLoughery, E. P., 2018. Professionalism framings across medical schools. Journal of general
internal medicine. 33(5). pp.610-611.
Kam, C. C. S., Hue, M. T. and Cheung, H. Y., 2018. Plagiarism of Chinese secondary school
students in Hong Kong. Ethics & Behavior. 28(4). pp.316-335.
Shin, S., Aiken, K. D. and Aleccia, V.A., 2017. Business Students’ Perceptions of Academic
Misconduct, Credential Embellishment, and Business Unethicality. Journal of Business
Ethics Education. 14. pp.69-92.
Singh, S. and Remenyi, D., 2016. Plagiarism and ghostwriting: The rise in academic
misconduct. South African Journal of Science. 112(5-6). pp.1-7.
Sutherland-Smith, W., 2016. Academic integrity in the digital age: Introduction. Handbook of
academic integrity, pp.571-573.
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