Information Ethics

Overview

When you contribute to the scholarly conversation through your own research or for a class assignment, you are responsible for doing so in a way that gives credit to the ideas and arguments of others. We call this “academic integrity.” Working or writing with integrity requires accurately representing what you contributed, as well as acknowledging how others have influenced your work. It also includes acknowledgment of when you use artificial intelligence in your work, even if it’s just to fix grammar. When you are a student, an accurate representation of your knowledge is important because it will allow both you and your professors to know the extent to which you have developed as a scholar. Part of that development is evidenced by how you apply the rules for acknowledging the work of others, typically through citations (for more info on citations, see the “Citation Basics” chapter).

Plagiarism occurs when you fail to acknowledge the ideas or work of others in your own writing. In academic settings, you’re expected to both learn from existing sources and contribute your own thinking. This means combining others’ knowledge with your own insights to create new work. To maintain academic integrity, you must clearly indicate which parts of your work are based on others’ ideas by citing them properly. Failing to do so, intentionally or not, is considered plagiarism.

Plagiarism: Is It Really That Big of a Deal?

The consequences of plagiarism and upholding academic integrity are required to be included in every syllabus at UW-Green Bay. You might think to yourself, “But if I never get caught, what’s the big deal?” Listen to the two songs below. Notice any similarities?

Back in 1989, a rapper named Vanilla Ice released a song called “Ice Ice Baby.” It became a huge hit and was the first hip hop song ever to reach the Billboard Hot 100. But there was a problem. The song’s famous bass line wasn’t his. It came from a track by David Bowie and Queen, recorded eight years earlier.

Vanilla Ice didn’t ask for permission to use it. When people noticed, he said it was fine because he had changed one note. The original artists didn’t buy it. He ended up paying them and listing them as co-writers on his song. His reputation took a hit, and his music career never really bounced back.

Plagiarism in academics works the same way. If you take someone else’s work, change a few words, and pretend it’s yours without giving credit, you’re stealing their ideas. Whether it’s in music or in your assignments, the rule is the same: always give credit where it’s due.

Avoiding Accidental Plagiarism

Sometimes plagiarism is intentional. Most often, however, it is done accidentally and without malicious intent. In either scenario, your instructor would have no way of knowing whether you did it on purpose or not, so it’s important to understand the scenarios when you do or do not need to cite your work. Below are some tips for writing with academic integrity, taken from the “Harvard Guide to Using Sources“:

• Keep track of your sources. Use a citation organizer and download PDFs of electronic articles so you can easily refer back to a source and include citation information. For more information on organizing citations, see the “Citation Organization” chapter.
• Use a research plan. When you keep your research organized, you are less likely to plagiarize because you can use notes to indicate where you retrieved your information.
• Paraphrase carefully and acknowledge your sources explicitly when paraphrasing. It’s not enough to just change a few words here and there when paraphrasing. It should be written in your own voice. Even when you rewrite an idea from another source, you still need to include a citation.
• Don’t leave your citations for later. One of the most common mistakes that happens when writing a paper is thinking it will be easy to go through the paper and add citations after you’ve already written the paper. When you do this, you risk missing paraphrases or other ideas that require a citation.
• Quote sources properly. Always use quotation marks for any material that you quote directly, even for short phrases.
• Don’t reuse papers from other classes. If your assignment does not explicitly state that you can reuse a previous assignment, doing so is considered academic dishonesty. In most cases, your instructors expect that you are engaging with your coursework for each course and to present a previously written paper as one that you wrote for that particular class without disclosing is deceptive.

Using Sources Ethically

Students are often concerned with the details of correct citation, like when to include an author’s name in parentheses, how to format a bibliography, or how to indicate a quotation within a quotation. While these are all important and helpful to know, what is equally important is understanding the larger ethical principles that guide choosing and using sources. Here are a few of these larger ideas to keep in mind as you select and synthesize your sources:

• Represent the topic honestly
  • If most sources agree on something, like the idea that the middle class in the U.S. is shrinking, it’s misleading to highlight the one source that disagrees without noting it’s a minority view.
• Represent each source fairly
  • If a source says a small segment of the middle class is growing but emphasizes that most of it is shrinking, don’t twist the message to make it seem like the author’s main point is that the middle class is growing.
• Acknowledge bias
  • Some sources may be credible but still have strong political or ideological leanings. It’s important to note when a viewpoint is extreme or not widely accepted, rather than presenting it as mainstream.
• Cite even the informal sources
  • You may not think that you need to cite informal sources, like blogs, interviews with friends, or class notes. If you borrowed an idea or phrase from someone else, it always requires a citation, no matter how informal.
• Paraphrase and summarize in your own words
  • Don’t just change a few words and call it your own. Think about how you’d feel if someone copied your work and said, “I just changed a few things.” You’d still recognize your voice—and so would they. Respect others’ work by truly rewriting and always citing.

Attributions

This chapter contains materials adapted from Ethical Use and Citing Source in Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research Copyright © 2015 by Teaching & Learning, Ohio State University Libraries is licensed under a CC-BY 4.0 license, except where otherwise noted.