ACADEMIC STANDARDS, CHEATING, AND PLAGIARISM

University Policy on Academic Standards and Cheating

The first obligation of students is to pursue conscientiously the academic objective which they have determined for themselves. Students are expected to conform to all regulations of the university, of the college in which they are enrolled, and of the classes in which they are registered. It is further expected that all examinations, tests, written papers or other assignments completed as a part of academic programs are the product of the student’s own work and effort.

This means that students may not solicit or use unauthorized material or assistance for their own benefit and may not offer or give such assistance to another student. Every written report or similar class assignment must indicate fully the sources from which the information used is obtained, and any verbatim quotations or paraphrases must be clearly indicated as such and properly credited to the source from which they were extracted or adapted.
Academic dishonesty may also involve cheating or plagiarism. Cheating is defined as the use of illegal techniques (slips, copying, signs, etc.) to convey or receive answers during examinations. Plagiarism is described and defined in the section below.

University Statement on Plagiarism and the Documentation of Written Work

The honest documentation of the student’s written work is absolutely essential. The faculty of UMass Boston expects each student’s papers to derive from the student whose name appears on them. The student who submits a paper which derives from unacknowledged sources plagiarizes by representing as her or his own the words and ideas of others. Every student, therefore, has a serious obligation to her or himself and to the university to acknowledge any joint work in the laboratory or in outside investigation. She or he must respond to examination questions on the basis of her or his own effort. Because ignorance does not excuse any violation of this basic principle—that derived writing must be clearly acknowledged—the faculty has adopted the following guidelines regarding documentation.

1. In writing themes, essays, and term papers for her or his courses at UMass Boston, the student should strive to say what she or he has to say in her or his own words. She or he should carefully avoid repeating words and phrases taken from books and articles written by other people, or from internet sources.
   It is often quite proper, however, to summarize or paraphrase what someone else has written on a given subject, but the student must put the summary or paraphrase in her or his own words.
   
   The student not only should strive to put in smooth language of her or his own what someone else has written, but must also give full credit in her or his text of the writer whose ideas she or he is summarizing. Phrases like “according to Joan Smith” and “Joan Smith says” should always accompany a summary or paraphrase of another writer’s material. And in text or in a footnote the exact source (title of book or internet article), as well as author, date, and place of publication, and the page or pages from which the summary is taken) should be given.
   In general, footnotes are unnecessary in short papers dealing with a single work and not deriving from a variety of sources. The student is frequently required to discuss single works in her or his themes, and in such cases it is economical and convenient to dispense with a complicated documentary apparatus and to record page numbers in parentheses in the body of the paper.
   It is not necessary to document specific facts which are common knowledge. But facts and opinions which are new discoveries by the student’s sources, or debatable matters for which the student’s source is taking responsibility, must always be documented.
2. On occasion the student may find it helpful to use direct quotations. It is important to observe the following rules in quoting the words of others.
   
   The words quoted must be exactly as they appear in the original source. The reader must be informed, either in brackets or in a footnote, of even the slightest change made in the original passage. More specifically, the omission of words from a quoted passage must be indicated by three dots (...), but any punctuation contained in the original must be given in addition to the three dots (...). Any words inserted by the student into a quoted passage, by way of omitted information, must be included in square brackets. The use of italics to emphasize words and phrases not italicized in the original must also be indicated with square brackets: italics mine. When a student is quoting from a source which is in turn quoting from another source, the student must make this fact clear to the reader. The following principle governs documentation in general: The reader should know what material belongs to the author of the paper and what material belongs to her or his sources.
3. There remain some questions related to documentation standards and these should be considered briefly.
   
   One source of confusion in the documentation of written work is the degree to which a student may be responsible for acknowledging those ideas which have developed from conversation or class discussion. Here good sense and honesty are the criteria, and the student must decide how to conduct her or himself with self-respect. Any student in doubt about the independence of what she or he is writing would be wise to indicate briefly that the ideas are not her or his own. Phrases like “one of my classmates suggests” or “the conclusion reached in class was” are usually adequate for this purpose.
   
   Again, the student may sometimes ask a typist to prepare a final copy of her or his paper, but the faculty expects that the typist has done nothing whatever materially to change the paper as written by the student. Such papers, like those the student herself or himself types, deserve careful proofreading to insure that the paper represents her or his independent work and that the copy is free of mechanical errors. Again, a student sometimes wishes to submit the same paper in two separate courses. Because it is dishonest to represent such a paper as one designed for one course alone, the student should seek the permission and approval of the instructor in each course.
4. Although scholars have agreed upon certain conventions for documentation, many of which have been discussed above, the student must decide for herself or himself the frequency and extent of documentation. She or he has, therefore, a great responsibility.
   
   She or he should document when in doubt and make unequivocally clear the distinction between what belongs to herself or himself and what belongs to others. Plagiarism may take many forms: presenting passages from the works of others as works of one’s own, the unacknowledged paraphrasing of ideas developed by another, the creation of a patchwork of phrases and ideas, often from several sources, and the uncredited use of a strikingly appropriate term resulting from another’s ingenuity (as, for instance, David Riesman’s term ‘unmerry emulative chase’ in reference to American social pressures). All of these uses are dishonest. Indeed, plagiarism is a serious offense and may be attended by severe penalties, including expulsion from the university.
   
   Term paper corporations are illegal enterprises in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A person convicted of selling term papers, theses, or research papers intended to be used for academic credit may be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned for not more than six months or both.
   
   The same penalties apply for persons convicted of taking an examination or examinations for another at an educational institution.
   
   Students suspected of cheating and/or plagiarism will be subject to university policies, procedures and sanctions as described in the “Code of Student Conduct,” found under “Student Rights and Responsibilities” in this section.