To maintain academic integrity, you must show where any ideas, theories, data or materials that you use or adapt in your work are from.
1. Acknowledge your sources
To maintain academic integrity:
- Take your own notes (and rephrase ideas into your own words) from scholarly sources, noting down references as you go.
- Include an in-text citation and reference list entry every time you:
- use direct quotations (use someone else's words)
- paraphrase (someone else's ideas into your own words)
- copy and include visuals, such as tables, images or lecture slides etc., even if they are commonly available or just for decorative purposes.
- Make sure citations and references are complete and accurate.
- Acknowledge use of any copied or reworked materials (eg. text, images, music, video) from generative artificial intelligence tools (GenAI) (such as ChatGPT, DALL-E) by declaring it's use (you'll also need to follow the advice from your subject coordinator about whether you can use GenAI tools in assessments for that subject). Find out more about how to reference GenAI and ChatGPT in assessments.
- Get familiar with the academic expectations and conventions in Australia, even if using someone else's work without acknowledging the source is a sign of respect when you have studied previously.
- You don't need to acknowledge:
- common knowledge (take a look at the Academic Integrity at UTS tutorial and quiz for more information about what is considered to be 'common knowledge')
- when you have made the discovery yourself through experimentation or analysis.
To avoid misconduct:
- Don't forget to add quotation marks to direct quotations.
- Don't forget to cite the source of the information when paraphrasing.
- Don't just mix the order of words to make it sound different while keeping the original idea or concept without acknowledging the source.