Academic integrity

Educational level: this is a tertiary (university) resource.

Completion status: this resource is ~25% complete.

Academic integrity is the moral code or ethics of academia. This includes values such as avoiding cheating or plagiarism, maintenance of academic standards, and honesty and rigour in research and academic publishing.^[1]

This page provides an undergraduate-level introduction to academic and educational integrity.

Students

Some examples of educational dishonesty by students:

Marsden, Carroll, and Neill (2005)^[2]: N = 954 students enrolled in 12 faculties of 4 Australian universities, self-reported levels of:
- Cheating (41%),
- Plagiarism (81%)
- Falsification (25%)
The shadow scholar: The man who writes your students' papers tell his story (The Chronicle, 2010)
Student cheated way into Harvard (SBS World News, 2010)

Academic staff are also subject to many potential biases in conducting and communicating about their academic work. For example:

Study sees a slant in articles on drug (New York Times, 2010) - "experts who were paid by its [drug name] manufacturer have been significantly more likely than others to draw positive conclusions about the drug’s safety and efficacy"
Medical papers by ghostwriters pushed therapy (Inside Higher Ed, 2009) - "Ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known."
For scientists, an exploding world of pseudo-academia - Academics seduced to submit to fake journals and conferences (New York Times, 2013)

There are counteracting biases in scientific publishing:
- the tendency towards low-power studies which underestimate effects
- the tendency to publish significant over non-significant effects
Violations of academic integrity are prevalent, from students through researchers and sponsoring institutions and companies
Education and vigilance is needed to help develop and improve educational and academic integrity

↑ Alison Kirk, Learning and the marketplace: A philosophical, cross-cultural (and occasionally irreverent) guide for business and academe
↑ Marsden, H., Carroll, M., & Neill, J. T. (2005). Who cheats at university? A self-report study of dishonest academic behaviours in a sample of Australian university students. Australian Journal of Psychology, 57, 1–10.