Academic Integrity: What Is It, and Why Should You Have It?

The primary goal for most of the institutions is to develop themselves. The growth of any academic institution essentially depends on the students. Hence, academic integrity is closely bound to the idea of developing through acquiring new knowledge

Hence, individual scholars need to work with each other to build an ambience of mutual respect and cooperation. Nowadays, the term ‘academic integrity’ is mostly related to negative terms or negative ideas like plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification also, has become more like avoiding plagiarism, fabrication. Hence, many institutions may tend to give less prominence to the idea of building an environment that nurtures growth, mutual trust, and respect.

has become more like avoiding plagiarism, fabrication. Hence, many institutions may tend to give less prominence to the idea of building an environment that nurtures growth, mutual trust, and respect.

Some Facts About Academic Integrity

The academic integrity definition says putting values like respect and cooperation in practice while being honest in university academic work to aim for educational development and knowledge accumulation.

The goal of the university is to ensure high-quality education and responsibility of the students maintain academic integrity. They did it by award credit for work done with honesty and conducted work.

Know About the Necessity of Academic Integrity

Academic integrity, in a way, represents the learning environment, the students’ knowledge, etc. Therefore when many students come from foreign, they choose reputed institutions. If a university or college fails to maintain integrity, they may fail to retain their reputation. It is harmful to the impression of an institution.

The students come to an institute to learn. If they end up plagiarising in their project, that indicates that they are not learning. Therefore plagiarism is one of the top threats to the academic integrity of an institution. The universities also have their educational policies that deal strictly with the students committing plagiarism.

The university’s teaching is equally questioned for any unethical means taken by the students during their academic careers. A student may refuge in dishonest means, but that does not mean the educational institution cannot provide quality teaching to their students.

If there is a violation of academic integrity inside the office, then the companies offering jobs may back off from recruiting other students from the institution. If a student in the future shows some sort of dishonesty in office work, they may get to face bitter consequences.

Academic Integrity Violations:

There are different forms of violations. Some of them are:

• Cheating:

If a student tries to use any illegal or unauthorized assistance, information, or study aids during an educational event, it can be considered a violation of academic integrity. For example, copying someone else’s answer during the exam, carrying crib sheets, notes, etc., or having electronic gadgets like Bluetooth in the exam hall is considered an academic integrity violation.

They are not supposed to use a single term paper for multiple instructors, and they must not submit purchased term papers. These are the instances of academic integrity violations.

• Fabrication:

Fabrications, which include changing the answers after the exam paper, is given back to the students, violate ethical research principles, and threaten academic integrity.

• Contributing to Academic Dishonesty:

It may also happen that a student is not willingly participating in academic dishonesty, but they are facilitating it.

Suppose a student helps someone copy their answer, take an exam for someone else, and upload their homework to a social platform from where other students can copy it. In that case, they are also posing themselves as a threat to the institution’s academic integrity.

• Misinterpretation of Academic records and others:

Creating or transcribing any university documents or duplication of records, including the graduation certificates, forgery of official academic documents is pointed out as academic integrity violations.

Suppose the teachers and other staff do not adhere to professional ethics and facilitate any work related to academic dishonesty. In that case, that is also an academic integrity violation.

How to Ensure Academic Integrity?

The students and university can ensure academic integrity by some steps:

When students or researchers publish their papers, they need to make sure that they do not commit any wrong. They also keep in mind that they are representing their university or institution. The students and university need to use the information appropriately, based on the copyright and privacy laws.

The students also need to acknowledge the sources they are collecting the information from with proper citation. They need to be careful about not doing any unethical work. The student should not also present someone else’s work as their own.

The researchers associated with any university or institution should conduct the fundamental research ethically while keeping in line with the university’s rules and regulations. They need to act ethically not to harm the institution’s academic integrity.

For both the student and researchers, we need to be careful about plagiarism. When they publish or submit their work, they can use other writers’ work in their writing. If they are doing so, they need to make sure to put those parts within quotation marks and correctly cite those parts’ sources—if they fail to do so, that can be a sort of plagiarism.

Crediting the source is the only way to stay away from any allegation of plagiarism. For the students, paraphrasing, summarizing, and quoting must be done correctly, or that can be an instance of plagiarism.

It is always better for the students to use original content for their writing. The students must use plagiarism checker tool to present in work. The tools generate a detailed report, and the student can easily remove them.

Follow the Rules and Regulations of an Institution.

The institutions also have their own rules, laws, and regulations to ensure academic integrity. The students, researchers, and staff should follow those rules, regulations, and policies.

The institutions also have some penalties for academic misconduct. There are penalties for failing academic tasks and not getting re-admission in the university within the said time. Therefore, to maintain the academic integrity it’s wise to use a plagiarism checker.