Referencing Guide: Academic Conduct and Turnitin Guidance

There are several defining characteristics of academic integrity, which include:

• Any work undertaken is original i.e. not plagiarised or copied and submitted as if your own
• You must acknowledge the ideas of other academics, organisations etc and give due credit in your writing.
• In addition, you need to use these ideas in the correct contexts
• Using unrelated research to a topic or area is simply incorrect
• You must accurately reference or cite these ideas, using the correct referencing or citation style

Collusion is working with another student to write an assessment which should have been done on your own.

Examples of collusion in at university may include:

• Joint Submission of Individual Work: Students working together on assignments or projects that are supposed to be completed independently and then submitting the same or very similar work as their own.
• Sharing Answers: Providing or receiving unauthorized assistance on exams, quizzes, or other assessments, such as sharing answers during an exam.
• Unauthorized Group Work: Engaging in group work on assignments or projects that are meant to be completed individually, without proper acknowledgment or permission from the instructor.
• 'Ghost writing' or Essay Mills: Paying someone else to write an assignment or part of an assignment on behalf of the student, without proper acknowledgment.

Academic misconduct is any action which gains or attempts to gain an unfair advantage for a student in relation to a summative assessment. In other words, any kind of behaviour which amounts to cheating in a final assessment. Common examples of academic misconduct are plagiarism, collusion, and falsification of evidence.

The University of Law's, policy and rules about academic misconduct can be found on Elite. Furthermore, for guidance on the use of AI, in relation to assessments and academic misconduct, consult the AI Policy and Protocols.

Plagiarism is when you pass other ideas as your own. When you write coursework assignments, you need to use facts and ideas from other people's publications to back up the point you're making. You can do this by referencing and you can find guidance on all styles of referencing used at the University of Law within the referencing pages.

The University of Law uses Turnitin to check the similarity of submitted assignments to other pieces of writing. For support understanding the similarity report, please read the document linked below.