Academic Honesty

Academic honesty and integrity are the foundations of an academic community and are important aspects of being involved in the university. As a student you should understand the standards that are expected of you in this community.

Would you want to be operated on by a doctor who cheated his way through medical school? Or, how would you feel about driving your family over a bridge designed and built by an engineer who cheated her way through engineering school?

Integrity is important in all aspects of life, and demanded of students and faculty in academic settings.

Your professors expect that all work submitted by you will be your own ideas and effort. When the work does not represent your work it must be properly cited. Cheating, forgery, plagiarism or the unauthorized use of work belonging to another, except under Federal exemptions such as Fair Use, are all considered academic misconduct.

SUU Academic Honesty Policy

As a SUU student you should know that the University has established policies setting the standards for academic honesty and integrity. SUU statements and policies on academic honesty are available in: SUU Policies and Procedures, the SUU Student Handbook, and the SUU General Catalog:

• Students can review SUU Policy #6.33, Academic Integrity for definitions of violations and infractions. As a participant in the academic community it is important to know about academic integrity and honesty, to understand and avoid plagiarism, and to understand social and ethical issues, such as copyright, when using information for your research.
• The SUU Student Handbook discusses What constitutes academic misconduct under the section: "Student Rights, Responsibilities & Conduct."
• The SUU General Catalog:  On the Current Students webpage, select General Catalogs, then the Current Catalog. In the newest Catalog, click Academic Policies & Procedures, then General Policies, then Academic Honesty.

Students should read and understand the behaviors that are considered academic dishonesty at SUU. Examples of behaviors constituting academic dishonesty include:

• Cheating on examinations or other forms of assessment or assignments. Cheating is defined as using or attempting to use materials, information, notes, study aids, fellow students, or other assistance which has not been authorized by the instructor.
• Plagiarism. Plagiarism is intentionally or carelessly presenting the work of another as one’s own. This includes submitting an assignment purporting to be the student’s original work which has wholly or in part been created by another person, or by the cutting and pasting of source material. It also includes the presentation of the work, ideas, representations, or words of another person without proper acknowledgement of sources.
• Fabrication or forgery. Fabrication is the use of invented, counterfeited, altered, or forged information in assignments of any type including those activities done in conjunction with academic courses that require students to be involved in out of classroom experiences.
• Obstruction of learning. Obstruction is limiting the academic opportunities of other students by improperly impeding their work or their access to educational resources.
• Multiple submissions of assignments. Multiple submissions are submission of the same or substantially the same work for credit in two or more courses without the consent of the instructors. Multiple submissions include the use of any prior academic effort previously submitted for academic credit at this or a different institution.
• Copyright infringement. Unauthorized use and distribution of copyrighted works is illegal. There are exceptions to U.S. Copyright law for education. Copyright infringement information can be found in SUU Policy 5.54.
• Misconduct in research and creative endeavors. Misconduct in research includes the fabrication or falsification of data, plagiarism, and scientific or creative misrepresentation and is addressed in SUU Policy 6.14.
• Complicity. Complicity is assisting or attempting to assist another person in any act of academic dishonesty. This includes, but is not limited to, allowing other students to copy work, paying for resources or assistance, providing material of any kind that may be misleading to an instructor, and providing others with information about tests or other assessments.

Note also that University Policy 6.33 states that "Use of translation devices (print, electronic, or otherwise) in an academic setting is only permitted when prior authorization from the appropriate faculty member has been obtained."

Make sure you understand what activities are considered academic dishonesty on this campus and how your professors may respond to cases of suspected plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons licensing is a way for the copyright holder to pre-grant permission. When a creator puts their work under creative commons licensing, they are dictating the terms that will allow their works to be used.

Works under a CC license will always have the appropriate license and logo listed, so you can quickly tell what permissions you have to use the work, so you can correctly cite it when you do use it.

One of the most common you might see us the CC BY, which means that the works are free to use, as long as you give proper attribution to the author. You will most likely see the logo that looks like this:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Other licenses indicate that you can use it, but not create derivatives (ND), adapting the works into a new form, such as creating a screenplay from a book or story, etc. Others stipulate that you can't use it for commercial purposes (NC), or that you need to share your derivative with the same license as the work you are using (SA). With each additional stipulation for permission to use, the logo is added, making it easily recognizable on the work, as shown in the example below.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The graphic to the left shows the range of the licenses from most open to least open, so you can quickly get the idea of how it works. This was taken from the Creative Commons Organization website, which is under a CC BY 4.0 license. It is also a great resource to learn more about CC licensing and how you can get involved in the process.