Developing Academic Skills: Academic Integrity and Plagiarism Report

This report provides a comprehensive overview of academic integrity, focusing on the definition of plagiarism, its ethical implications, and the importance of upholding academic honesty. It explains plagiarism as an intentional or unintentional act of using others' ideas without proper attribution and highlights the negative impacts on individual learning and university reputation. The report details methods to uphold academic integrity, including avoiding sharing assignments, following instructions, and accurately citing sources. It emphasizes time management and the correct use of the Harvard referencing style, with examples of in-text citations and reference list entries. Furthermore, the report outlines five key strategies to avoid plagiarism: correct referencing, citing sources, using quotation marks, paraphrasing, presenting original ideas, and using plagiarism checkers. The conclusion stresses the importance of adhering to university guidelines, ensuring plagiarism-free content, and seeking clarification from tutors. References to relevant academic sources are also provided.

For a student it is required to implement academic honesty because avoidance
of such can impact negatively upon individual’s learning as well as reputation
of University can also be compromised by such unethical behaviour. Strong
academic integrity expectations protect learner’s image, reflect favourably on
the university and add to society's well-being.
The Harvard referencing style is used at two places; first is the references list,
present at the end of the file, and second is in the text. If an author’s name is
present in the text, it will definitely appear in the reference list. In referencing,
even small things like a full stop and comma are very important.
While doing In-text citation, the author’s family name and the year book’s or
article’s publication is written while quoting or paraphrasing. For a journal
article involving three contributors, here is a typical example as it would seem
in a reference list:
Author,˰AA,˰Author,˰B˰&˰Author,˰C˰YEAR,˰'Article title in between single
quotes, in lower case and with no full stop to end',˰Journal Title in Italics with
Capitals,˰vol.˰##,˰no.˰#,˰pp.˰##-##.
Note: ˰ represents a space. The In-text citation will be like, it has been argued
that . . . . . (Author YEAR, p. #) or Author (YEAR, p. #) states that . . . ..
The Harvard referencing style changes according to the source and number of
authors. In the case of an online source of information, the weblink is included
in the references. It is followed by the date on which it is accessed by the
writer.
Plagiarism is an unethical practice in which an individual uses ideas and
thoughts of another without any citation or acknowledgment. Plagiarism
often means purposely copying the work of others, but sometimes it occurs
unintentionally, by carelessness or forgetfulness. Thus, it can say that
plagiarism can be an intentional or unintentional act of individual. For
three reasons, plagiarism is known as unethical practice: Firstly, it is
unethical because it is a fraud because a person who implement this act is
violating someone else's intellectual property by using others' thoughts and
vocabulary and saying they are your own. Secondly, it may provide
inappropriate benefit to a wrong person and at last, it may lead misconduct
act for the one who represent their own ideas but someone else stealing
their work.
There are five ways that may help to avoid plagiarism such as:
 Cite the source: At the time of taking ideas from any source, it is
required to identify the full name of source, date of publishing,
name of author and so on.
 Include quotation: If someone uses the vocabulary of a source into
the work than one of the easiest and more obvious methods of
avoiding plagiarism is to use quotation marks throughout the text to
show that the words are not your own.
 Paraphrase: This is one of the simplest form of avoiding
plagiarism. In this individual requires to rewriting the information
there are taking from any source in their own words.
 Present own ideas: Instead of exploring ideas from other source,
individual needs to explain things in their own words or by their
own ideas.
 Use a plagiarism checker: At the time of completing work, student
can check their content in plagiarism checker because their might
be some possibility that you steal some sentence and words of
others.
Developing Academic Skills
Introduction
References
Morris, E.J., 2016. Academic integrity: A teaching and learning approach.
Handbook of academic integrity. pp.1037-1053.
Chowdhry, A., 2016. Ways to avoid and dodge plagiarism in scientific
writing? Personal experience. Accountability in research. 23(3). pp.195-197.
Lipson, C., 2019. Doing honest work in college: How to prepare citations,
avoid plagiarism, and achieve real academic success. University of Chicago
Press.
Pears, R. and Shields, G.J., 2019. Cite them right: the essential referencing
Conclusion
How to uphold academic integrity
Main reason behind the student’s act to conduct academic dishonesty is lack of
knowledge to do correct work, cite authenticate sources or how to work with
information from websites. Due to absence of appropriate information students
simply make poor decisions which raise academic dishonesty. Thus, it is
required for students to avoid inappropriate act while doing their assignment.
The methods to uphold academic integrity are:
 Avoid sharing of assignments with anyone because if someone copying
with your assignment than it might be accused of academic dishonesty.
 It is needed that until tutor or teacher say to work with others, you are
required to complete assignments individually. Furthermore,
expected instruction while working on a group project.
 Student needs to track references properly as well as requires to learn
how to accurately cite the sources. These references should belongs to
the content that student put in their assignment.
 It is required to implement time management practices because an
assignment is needed to complete on time because rushing for time is
no excuse for plagiarism.
 One major consideration is to read the whole syllabus carefully in order
to track all the instructions related to assignment and coursework.
 Student can ask their doubts and issues to the tutor in order to avoid
wrong work or any unethical working in the assignment.
From the above report it has been summarised that it is required for student to
so their work with honesty. In this respect, they needs to keep in mid some
strict guidelines of university that their contents needs to plagiarism free, it
content clear information related to syllabus etc.
What is plagiarism and ways to avoid plagiarism? How to reference correctly using AU Harvard
Referencing