Academic integrity is very important to you as a law student. You may not think of it like this, but as a student, you're a member of a global academic community. Academic integrity is an asset in legal education because it enables law students to practice ethical decision-making as the foundation of a positive professional identity necessary for life as a lawyer. The consequences for a law student found to have breached the rules of academic integrity may be serious because it is a breach of trust, which is a hallmark of the legal profession.
As a student at the university, you are in a position where you will be offered support, but you also have obligations. These include operating within the ethical expectations that all students at the university are expected to follow, working responsibly with other students, and putting effort into your assignments.
The university expects this of you because developing strong practice during your academic career can help build the foundation for you to act with integrity in all areas of your life. The skills you develop are a good starting point for when you transfer to a professional work environment.
The University of the Western Cape is built on shared values and norms of behaviour, including honesty, fairness, and responsibility.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is taking another person's work and presenting it as your own.
There are different forms of plagiarism and a few examples are:
Watch the video on "What is Plagiarism".
Collusion
Collusion is when one person intentionally collaborates with another person in a dishonest way.
This is a more serious form of inappropriate collaboration with another student. While inappropriate collaboration may be accidental, collusion is a deliberate attempt to deceive.
Some examples of collusion are:
Cheating
Cheating of any form in examinations is regarded as serious academic misconduct.
Some examples of cheating are:
Misrepresentation or falsification
Misrepresentation or falsification of university documents is a serious form of academic misconduct and can lead to suspension or expulsion.
Examples of falsification include:
What happens when you copy and paste from the original source?
Read the extract from a student’s essay, and compare it to the original source.
Student's Work
With advances in digital technology, shifting public expectations, and the increasing reach of the internet, the law of copyright is now more important than ever to protect the rights of copyright holders.
The copyright holder is typically the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned. Copyright holders routinely invoke legal and technological measures to prevent and penalize copyright infringement. Copyright infringement refers to the use of works protected by copyright law without permission, infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works.
While serious copyright infringement can be prosecuted via the criminal justice system, disputes are usually resolved through direct negotiation, a notice, and take-down process, or litigation in civil court.
Original Source
Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission, infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works. The copyright holder is typically the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned. Copyright holders routinely invoke legal and technological measures to prevent and penalize copyright infringement.
Copyright infringement disputes are usually resolved through direct negotiation, a notice and takedown process, or litigation in civil court. Egregious or large-scale commercial infringement, especially when it involves counterfeiting, is sometimes prosecuted via the criminal justice system. Shifting public expectations, advances in digital technology and the increasing reach of the Internet have led to such widespread, anonymous infringement that copyright-dependent industries now focus less on pursuing individuals who seek and share copyright-protected content online, and more on expanding copyright law to recognize and penalize – as "indirect" infringers – the service providers and software distributors which are said to facilitate and encourage individual acts of infringement by others.
Wikipedia, Copyright Infringement (19 June 2020)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
What are the problems with the student's essay?
There are no citations to the source - Any information used from a source must be cited appropriately. Quotation marks need to be used for direct quotes.
There is no evidence of the student's understanding - This is very important in your studies. By purely copy-pasting, the student has not demonstrated their ability to synthesise and express these ideas in their own words.
There is poor evaluation of source credibility - Wikipedia entries are rarely produced or reviewed by experts in the field, and should never be used for academic work. It is important to evaluate all sources in your research for credibility.
Quoting text
Remember that excessive quoting is not advised as it does not allow you to input your own ‘voice’ to the argument.
Why? Because:
When you are writing a piece of work and use someone else's words or ideas you must reference them.
Whilst studying at university you will need to refer to information from books, websites, journals, and other sources in your assignments. You must acknowledge or ‘cite’ this information in your work and include full details in your list of references. If you don’t do this correctly, you could be accused of using other people’s ideas or words and trying to pass them off as your own. This is known as plagiarism.
This means that you need to include detailed information on all sources consulted, within your text (in-text citations), footnotes, and at the end of your work (reference list or bibliography). Footnotes should be placed on the same page as their accompanying text. Footnote numbers are placed in superscript, usually at the end of the sentence. If you are referring to a word, place the footnote number directly after the word.
In-text or Footnotes
All material sourced from another author, whether it is directly quoted or paraphrased, must be referenced in the text or footnotes. Law students' references must be in a footnote and must be accurate. It must be possible for the reader to check that you have stated the law accurately. In other words, you need to give sufficient information in your footnote to enable another person to find the exact place from whence you have drawn your information. When you use case law as your authority, the connection between the case(s) you cite and what you are stating in your writing must be clear to the reader.
Bibliography
A bibliography is a detailed list of sources referred to in your essay or consulted during the course of its preparation. It contains more detail than footnote references; in particular, it indicates the publisher and place of publication of books. As with footnotes, each bibliography reference should end in a full stop.
There are several different referencing styles used within UWC but the Law Faculty requires law students to use the Law Faculty Styling Guide.
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