Nursing

Academic Integrity is a fundamental value at the University of Michigan and all students are expected to conduct their research and scholarly activities in an honest and responsible manner.

“Academic integrity is a community issue. Scholarly work is built on trust: trust that we accurately reported the lab results from which we drew conclusions, trust that we actually saw those medieval handwritten notations we analyzed, trust that the people we interviewed for a study actually said what we claimed. It is necessary to know where ideas came from in order to verify and build on them to create new knowledge.” (Beyond Plagiarism "Academic Integrity in Action")

The University of Michigan defines plagiarism as: "the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit." (Standard Practice Guide 303.03 Procedures (PDF))

Types of Plagiarism - Plagiarism Activities1

Intentional

• Fraud: Intentional "borrowing, purchasing, or otherwise obtaining work composed by someone else and submitted"2 under another's name.

Unintentional

• Patchwriting: Not always thought of as academic dishonestly, patchwriting is "half-copy[ing] the author's sentences... by plugging your synonyms into the author's sentence structure."3 It can occur whether or not the original author is cited.
• Failure to Cite: Summarizing, paraphrasing or using author's exact language without properly citing the source using footnotes, end-notes or parenthetical notes.
• Failure to Quote: Using the original author's exact language without using quotation marks or block quotation. Often results from students' inexperience with the material or discourse community.

1 Model taken from Rebecca Moore Howard, "Plagiarism, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty," College English 57 (Nov. 1995), 788 - 806.
2 Ibid., 799
3 Diana Hacker, The Bedford Handbook, (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998), 572.

1. Use an assignment scheduler to develop a plan weeks before your paper is due

2. Keep all notes on a single document for each paper or project (see "Note Taking Template" below)

3. Keep a running bibliography of all sources consulted. Citation management tools like Zotero can be very helpful for this! (Check out our Zotero tutorial!)

4. Always place quotation marks around words that you copy directly from any source (book, article, website, etc.)

5. Always write the complete citation for sources you plan to use: author(s), date of publication, title (book or article), journal, volume #, issue #, pages, if web access: url and date accessed etc.

6. Remember to cite text, images, video, art, or ideas that are not your own. This Citation Help Research Guide covers many styles and formats.

7. When in doubt, cite anyway!

(From "Academic Integrity and Avoiding Plagiarism" presentation by Gabriel Duque)