MIT Academic Integrity and Plagiarism PDF

What is Academic Integrity? Fundamental to the academic work you do at MIT is an expectation that you will make choices that reflect integrity and responsible behavior. MIT will ask much of you. Occasionally, you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you need to accomplish. You may be short on...

What is Academic Integrity? Fundamental to the academic work you do at MIT is an expectation that you will make choices that reflect integrity and responsible behavior. MIT will ask much of you. Occasionally, you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you need to accomplish. You may be short on time, working on several assignments due the same day, or preparing for qualifying exams or your thesis presentation. The pressure can be intense. However, no matter what level of stress you may find yourself under, MIT expects you to approach your work with honesty and integrity. Honesty is the foundation of good academic work. Whether you are working on a problem set, lab report, project, or paper, avoid engaging in plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, cheating, or facilitating academic dishonesty. Follow this advice: Plagiarism Do: Don’t: Trust the value of your own intellect. Purchase papers or have someone write a paper for you. Undertake research honestly and credit others for their work. Copy ideas, data, or exact wording without citing your source. Unauthorized Collaboration Do: Don’t: Do your own thinking. Collaborate with another student beyond the extent specifically approved by the instructor. Cheating Do: Don’t: Demonstrate your own achievement. Copy answers from another student; don’t ask another student to do your work for you. Don’t fabricate results. Don’t use electronic or other devices during exams. Accept corrections from the instructor as part of the learning process. Alter graded exams and submit them for re-grading. Do original work for each class. Submit projects or papers that have been done for a previous class. Facilitating Academic Dishonesty Do: Don’t: Showcase your own abilities. Alow another student to copy your answers on assignments or exams. Don’t take an exam or complete an assignment for another student. 2 Academic Integrity at MIT Violations of Academic Integrity: What are the consequences? The consequences for cheating, plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, and other forms of academic dishonesty can be very serious, possibly including suspension or expulsion from the Institute. Any violation of the rules outlined in this handbook, established by the instructor of the class, or deviating from responsible conduct of research, may be considered violations of academic integrity. The MIT Policy on Student Academic Dishonesty is outlined in MIT’s Policies and Procedures 10.2 at https://policies.mit.edu/policies-procedures. Instructors, research or thesis supervisors decide how to handle violations of academic integrity on a case-by-case basis, and three options exist: Academic consequences within a class or research project Within a class, the instructor determines what action is appropriate to take. Such action may include: • Requiring the student to redo the assignment for a reduced grade. • Assigning the student a failing grade for the assignment. • Assigning the student a failing grade for the class. For a research project, the supervisor determines what action is appropriate to take. Such action may include: • Terminating the student’s participation in the research project. The instructor or supervisor may also submit documentation to the Office of Student Conduct (OSC) in the form of a letter to file or a formal complaint. These options are outlined below. Letter to file The instructor or supervisor writes a letter describing the nature of the academic integrity violation, which is placed in the student’s discipline file. The discipline file is maintained by the OSC and is not associated with the student’s academic record. • A letter may be filed with the OSC in addition to the action already taken in the class or research project. • If a student receives a letter to file, s/he has the right to: • submit a reply, that is added to the student’s file. • appeal the letter to the Committee on Discipline (COD) for a full hearing. • In resolving the violation described in the letter, the OSC reviews any previous violations which are documented in the student’s discipline file. Committee on Discipline (COD) complaint The instructor or supervisor submits a formal complaint to the COD, which resolves cases of alleged student misconduct. • This complaint may be filed with the OSC in addition to the action already taken in the class or research project. • A COD complaint is reviewed by the COD Chair and considered for a hearing. Any previous violations documented in the student’s discipline file are reviewed as part of this process. • Cases resulting in a hearing are subject to a full range of sanctioning outcomes, including probation, suspension, dismissal, or other educational sanctions. Questions? Contact the Office of Student Conduct ([email protected]). View examples of typical MIT student conduct issues at: http://studentlife.mit.edu/osc/students. 3 Academic Integrity at MIT What is Plagiarism? During your academic career at MIT, you will write original papers and give oral presentations that require research in libraries and laboratories and accessing electronic resources. It is important to understand that standards for reusing other people’s creative output vary from discipline to discipline and culture to culture. For example, in the United States our copyright law does not protect ideas or facts, but does protect the particular, original expression of an idea in words or images when they are expressed in a tangible form. In some cultures, the concept of “owning” words that are arranged in a particular sequence may seem strange. Students from these cultures may have been encouraged to repeat the words of others and incorporate them into their own writing without quoting or otherwise indicating that they came from another source. Other cultures accept the practice of copying phrases or sentences into a paper without using quotation marks as long as the writer shows where they came from. These practices are not acceptable in North American academic culture. Creative expression of ideas through words, images, and other media is the lifeblood of this academic culture. For this reason, we expect that our original expressions should not be used by others without attribution and acknowledgment. Plagiarism occurs when you use another’s words, ideas, assertions, data, or figures and do not acknowledge that you have done so. If you use the words, ideas, or phrasing of another person or from published material, you must: • • Use quotation marks around the words and cite the source, or Paraphrase or summarize acceptably and cite the source. If you use charts, graphs, data sets, or numerical information obtained from another person or from published material, you must also cite the source. You must always acknowledge your sources by citing them. In this way, you have the right to use another’s creative output by giving that person credit for the work s/he has done. 4 Academic Integrity at MIT Avoiding Plagiarism: Cite Your Source Whenever you take information from a source, whether that source is published on paper, presented in a lecture or broadcast, or made available online, you must tell your reader where the information came from: that is, you must cite your source. What does it mean to “cite” a source? In writing a paper, it means: • You show, in the body of your paper, where the words or information came from, using an appropriate format, and • You provide complete information about the source (author, title, name of publication, date, etc.) at the end of your paper, in the bibliography (also called the works cited or references page, depending on the style you use). Note: Different disciplines use different citation styles, as do various journals within a single discipline. We discuss this further on page 14. If you are unsure which citation style to use, check with your instructor or research supervisor. In giving a formal presentation, it means: • You acknowledge, on your slide, where the graph, chart or other information came from. In writing a computer program, it means: • You use comments to credit the source of any code you adapted from an open source site or other external sources. Generally, providing a URL and the retrieval date is sufficient. You also need to follow the terms of any open source license that applies to the code you are using. Why should I cite my sources? • To show your readers that you have done your research. • To give credit to others for work they have done. • To point your readers to sources that may be useful to them. • To allow your readers to check your sources, if there are questions. Citing sources points the way for other scholars. Future generations of engineers, scientists and leaders will look to work done at MIT to solve some of the world’s greatest problems. Citation helps that process continue. 5 Academic Integrity at MIT Avoiding Plagiarism: Cite Your Source (continued) What should I cite? • Print sources: books, journal articles, newspaper – any material published on paper. • Electronic sources: Articles retrieved from databases such as Lexis-Nexis and ProQuest Personal and organizational websites Government and institutional websites Blogs Email messages Social media, such as Tweets and Facebook pages Computer source code In short, any material published or made available on the Internet. • Data: geospatial (GIS) data, Census, economic and other types of data published by governments, data from surveys, economic indicators, bioinformatics data. • Images: charts, graphs, tables, illustrations, architectural plans, photographs. • Recorded material: television broadcasts, podcasts or public speeches. • Spoken material: personal conversations, interviews, information obtained in lectures, poster sessions, or scholarly presentations of any kind. The MIT Libraries provides additional guidance on what, why, and how to cite: http://libguides.mit.edu/citing 6 Academic Integrity at MIT What is Common Knowledge? You may have heard people say that you do not have to cite your source when the information you include is “common knowledge.” But what is common knowledge? Broadly speaking, common knowledge refers to information that the average, educated reader would accept as reliable without having to look it up. This includes: Information that most people know, such as that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit or that Barack Obama was the first American of mixed race to be elected president. Information shared by a cultural or national group, such as the names of famous heroes or events in the nation’s history that are remembered and celebrated. Knowledge shared by members of a certain field, such as the fact that the necessary condition for diffraction of radiation of wavelength from a crystalline solid is given by Bragg’s law. However, what may be common knowledge in one culture, nation, academic discipline or peer group may not be common knowledge in another. To help you decide whether information can be considered common knowledge, ask yourself: • Who is my audience? • What can I assume they already know? • Will I be asked where I obtained my information? Some examples: A description of the symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome would need to be cited for a composition in a general writing class but probably not need citation for an audience of graduate students in psychology. A reference to the practice of fair value accounting would be understood by a group of economists, but would need citation to an audience of non-experts. A statement reporting that 24% of children under the age of 18 live in households headed by single mothers would need to be cited. This is information that would not be known to the average reader, who would want to know where the figure was obtained. The best advice is: When in doubt, cite your source. 7 Academic Integrity at MIT What is Common Knowledge? (continued) Common knowledge: yes or no? Consider the following statements. Which would be considered common knowledge? Which would need to be cited? 1. The Big Bang theory posits that the universe began billions of years ago with an enormous explosion. 2. The phrase “Big Bang” was coined by Sir Fred Hoyle, an English astronomer. Hoyle used the term to mock the theory, which he disagreed with. 3. According to the Big Bang model, the initial explosion was produced when an infinitely hot, dense center referred to as a singularity, began to expand, giving rise to the particles that eventually formed into our universe. Statement #1 is common knowledge; the Big Bang theory is widely accepted among scientists and the term is used regularly in everyday speech. Statement #2 needs citation; this information is very specific and may even be unknown to some physicists. Statement #3 would not need citation to an audience of physics students but would need citation in a paper for a non-expert audience. What is not common knowledge? • Datasets generated by you or others. • Statistics from sources such as the US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. • References to studies done by others. • Reference to specific dates, numbers, or facts the reader would not know unless s/he had done the research. The following statements are not common knowledge and would need citation: Researchers have found that dispersants utilized to clean up oil spills can lead to lung damage when airborne particles of these dispersants combine with crude oil and are inhaled. (Source: Wang, H., Shi, YL, Major, D. and Yang, HL (2012, August). Lung epithelial cell death induced by oildispersant mixtures. Toxicology in Vitro, 26, 5, 746-751. doi: 10.1016/j.tiv.2012.03.011) A recent study by the Brookings Institute found that the number of people living in poverty in America grew by 12.3 million between 2000 and 2010, so that by the end of 2010, 15% of the population was living under the poverty line. (Source: Kneebone, E., C. Nadeau and Berube, A. (2011, November 3). The re-emergence of concentrated poverty: metropolitan trends in the 2000s. Brookings Metropolitan Opportunity Series. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-re-emergence-of-concentrated-poverty-metropolitan-trends-in-the2000s/) The energy of mixing per site for a binary polymer blend with differing degrees of polymerization can be described through the Flory-Huggins equation. (Source: Flory, P.J. (1953). Principles of Polymer Chemistry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) 8 Academic Integrity at MIT