Integrity and Responsibility in Academic Writing Lawrence Cleary

Integrity and Responsibility in Academic Writing Lawrence Cleary Consultant in Writing and Writing Pedagogy Regional Writing Centre, UL www. ul. ie/rwc

What is Academic Integrity? • Academic – What is the academic project? • Integrity – How do the ethical and moral principles of the academy, here, cohere with what is ethical and moral in the academies where you come from? • Why be honest? Who cares?

Honesty • You did the work using only authorised assistance, materials and study aids. • You did not misrepresent the words, ideas, data or methods as your own, and you acknowledged the sources of the words, ideas, data or methods of others. • You based your conclusions on valid, reliable evidence.

Honesty • You received permission before resubmitting work done for assessment in a previous class to the current class. • You were awarded a place in a programme based on official transcripts. • You avoid assisting others to cheat or be dishonest. • You play fair.

The Challenge of Original Work • Planning: Time/Space. • Locating/recording the sources of the information on which your argument relies. • Developing a repertoire of ways to record the ideas or data of, and/or the methods applied by, others: – – Paraphrasing Summarising Quoting Synthesising • Accurately and honestly representing the meaning/implications of those ideas as they were expressed by the author. • Distinguishing your words, ideas, data, methods from theirs.

HARD!!!

The rhetorical situation • Occasion • Topic • Audience: Who are you talking to? What do they want you to know? • Purpose: to persuade – How? • Appeals to reason • Appeals for the credibility of the author • Emotional appeals • Writer

Why? • Why do we report on the findings of others? • Why do we record the source from which those findings come?

Reporting the work of others • • • Making use of the ideas of other people is one of the most important aspects of academic writing because it shows awareness of other people’s work; it shows that you can use their ideas and findings; it shows you have read and understood the material you are reading; it shows where your contribution fits in; it supports the points you are making. (UEf. AP, 2005) Regional Writing Centre 9

Reporting the work of others • Reporting the work of others to support a claim that you have made or a position that you have taken: – Quotation – Paraphrase – Summarise – Synthesise • Distinguishing your ideas from those ideas of others

Recording Sources • What kind of style sheet are you working from? • What kind of text/medium is the source? • What kind of information is being referenced?

Summation • Academic integrity requires that we be good scientists, not loading the dice or being invested in an outcome, but true to the methods that lead to replicable findings, which are generalisable, and therefore, can be regarded as most likely to be an accurate representation of reality. • It also requires that we do all that we can to assure audiences of the validity of the sources and the integrity of the findings on which we base our conclusions.

Resources Dictionary. com (2015) ‘academic’ [online], available: dictionary. reference. com/browse/academic? s=t [accessed 3 July 2014]. Dictionary. com (2015) ‘integrity’ [online], available: dictionary. reference. com/browse/integrity? s=t [accessed 3 July 2014]. Fish, S. (2011) ‘What is Academic Work? ’, The New York Times, The Opinion Pages: Opinionator [online], available: opinionator. blogs. nytimes. com/2011/02/07/what-is-academic-work/? _r=1 [accessed: 3 July 2015]. Glucksman Library, University of Limerick (n. d. ) Cite it Right [online], available: http: //www 3. ul. ie/~library/pdf/citeitright. pdf [accessed 3 July 2014]. International Centre for Academic Integrity (ICAI) (n. d. ) Fundamental Values Project: Project Overview [online], available: www. academicintegrity. org/icai/resources-2. php [accessed 3 July 2015]. UEf. AP. com (2014) Academic Writing: Citing Sources [online], available: http: //www. uefap. com/writing/writfram. htm [accessed 3 July 2014]. UEf. AP. com (2014) Academic Writing: Writing a List of References [online], available: http: //www. uefap. com/writing/writfram. htm [accessed 3 July 2014]. UEf. AP. com (2014) Academic Writing: Reporting-Paraphrase, Summary & Synthesis[online], available: http: //www. uefap. com/writing/writfram. htm [accessed 3 July 2014]. University of Southern California (USC) (n. d. ) “Don’t Do This!”—Quiz on Academic Integrity [online], available: http: //www. usc. edu/student-affairs/student-conduct/aiquiz. html#q 9 [accessed 3 July 2015].