Translation from Finnish
(In case of conflicting interpretations,
the original, official Finnish document rules.)
CODE OF CONDUCT FOR PREVENTING AND DEALING WITH ACADEMIC FRAUD ANDPLAGIARISM
Rector’s decision on 13 June 2013, supplementing Section 24 of the Degree Regulations of the University of Jyväskylä
CONTENTS
1 Scope of application
2 Principles of ethical conduct at the University
3 The University takes all cases of academicfraud very seriously
4 Academicfraud
5 Plagiarism
6 Teachers are obligated to makestudents aware ofgood practices in the academic community
7 Using the plagiarism detection software
8 General principles for dealing withsuspected fraud
9 Invigilator’s (proctor’s) or teacher’s actions in case of suspected fraudduring an examination
10 Teacher’s actions in case offraudrelated to an assignment, essay or similar work
11Supervisor’s and examiner’s actions in case of fraud related to a final thesis
12 Investigationphases of suspected academic fraud
13 Consequences and related decision-making
14 Legal protection of students
15 Inspection of suspected academic fraud and the invalidation of approval for study units already completed and approved
Appendix 1.Instructions for different parties in the University community to prevent fraud
Appendix2. Instructions to prevent plagiarism
Appendix 3.Distribution of responsibilities when processing a suspected fraud case and deciding on consequences
Appendix 4.Instructions for a student suspected of fraud
1 Scope of application
Where appropriate, this code of conduct applies to all degree studentsof the University of Jyväskylä and to all students who are completing separate studies or study modules. The group of degree students also includes students with separate agreements for commissioned studies,and the latter group also includes students who pursue Open University studies orstudies with a flexible study rights agreement (JOO), as well as international exchange students. This code of conduct comprises instructions to students, teachers and units that provide teaching.
These instructions concentrate on the recognition and prevention of academicfraud. Therefore, they focus on the reprehensibility of academic fraud from the viewpoint of the University’s ethical principles as well as on the recognition of fraud, the importance of information and guidance directed tostudents, and the significance of teaching arrangements and methods that prevent fraud. In addition, these instructions provide procedures for dealing with suspected academic fraud and its consequences.
2 Principles of ethical conduct at the University
The University is a community that carries outscientific research and provides research-based higher education.The Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity, appointed by the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland, published its instructions for responsible conduct of research on 14 November 2012. These instructions cover research and education at auniversity(Responsible conduct of research and procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in Finland, 2012, conduct of research is part of quality management in an organisation committed to it.The University of Jyväskylä is one of the organisations committed to complying with the guidelines. The realisation of responsible conduct of research requires that the entire University community, both staff and students, are committed to the principles of responsible conduct of research.
In the guidelines of the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity, the following principles,in particular,are related to research ethics:
•The research follows the principles that are endorsed by the research community, that is, integrity, meticulousness, and accuracy in conducting research, and in recording, presenting, and evaluating the research results.
•The methods applied for data acquisition as well as for researchand evaluation conform to scientific criteria and are ethically sustainable. When publishing the research results, the results are communicated in an open and responsible fashion that is intrinsic to the dissemination of scientific knowledge.
•When a researcher carries out his/her own research and publishes its results, he/she takes due account of the work and achievements of other researchers by respecting their work, citing their publications appropriately, and giving their achievements the credit and weight they deserve.
The University of Jyväskylä Ethical Principles approved by the University Board on 25 January 2012( emphasise that all members of the University community are expected to be committed “to the high ethical principles which arise from the University’s core values”.
All operations are based on fair and honest courses of action.
Plagiarism or any other academic fraud by a student is not only an offence to the student’s teachers and supervisors but also an offence to the whole University community and the ethical principlesthe community follows.
The University and especially each unit that provides education must ensure the following:
•As part of their study plans, students learn what it means to follow the responsible conduct of research in their branch of science.
•Students adopt the principles of responsible conduct of research and commit to obey them.
•Students are familiar with the central content of this code of conduct
for preventing academic fraud and plagiarism.
•Students are also otherwise guided to understand what academic fraud is and what consequences it may have.
A student isalso responsible for finding out what kind of behaviourisappropriate and what kind is fraudulent in studies. If a student is uncertain of the acceptability of an action, the student must clarify the matter with his/her teacher or supervisor.
3The University takes all cases of academicfraud very seriously
Internal and external confidence in the high quality of education at the University is based on the trust that a student who has successfully completed his/her studies has developed the knowledge, skills and competencesspecified in the learning outcome descriptions of degrees and curricula. Dishonesty in completing a degree or part of it or a fraudulent impact on their evaluation betrays this trust.
The University and everyoneoperating in it must takeeven the slightest fraud very seriously.If any teacher, other employee or student notices academic fraud, they must inform the representative of the unit. All proven cases of academic fraud will lead to consequences.
4 Academic fraud
Fraud is generally defined as a dishonest deed made in order to mislead someone for personal gain or to damage another individual.
In the context of studies, fraud refers to any dishonest activity a student uses to give a false impressionof his/her own or someone else’s skills in order to affect the approval or evaluation of a study unit.
Fraud means, for example, cheating on an exam, copying an essay or an assignmentof another student, fabricating or falsifying measurement results or other findings,and participating in an examination on behalf of someone else.Letting another student use an assignmentor other similar work knowing that the student will present it as his/her own is also considered academic fraud. It is fraudulentif a student submits his/her own previously approved exercise or similar work to complete another study unit (self-plagiarism) unless the use of a previous work has been separately agreed with the teacher or this possibilityhas been noted as appropriate for certain study units and is mentioned as a legitimate method in the instructions of the unit or subject.
If a study unit has been completedas group work, this must be clearly stated and, if possible, which part of the work each student was responsible for. Group work is a legitimate method tocomplete a study unitonly when the teacher has so instructed.
Academic fraud may also be a legally recognised offencein case of a copyright infringement,a copyright crime, the forgery of a transcript of records, certificate or any other document, or trade with counterfeit items. The University may direct suspected crimes to be investigated by thepolice.
5Plagiarism
Plagiarism is a form of academic fraud. It is generally defined as activity in which a person represents the work of another person as his/her own original work.
Most often the target of plagiarism is written text. Therefore, these instructions focus on the unacknowledged borrowing of text.However, content other than shorter or longer written texts may also be plagiarised:a sheet of statistics presenting research results, a measurement result of laboratory work, a piece of programme code, a research idea or notification, a theoretical concept or definition, etc. In these cases the guidelines of the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity use the term misappropriation.
Plagiarism is copying another person’s work either directly or in a modified form (including translation from one language to another) without naming the source. A student must clearly refer to any written material he/she has used, be it unpublished or published either in a traditional print format or on the Internet. The student must use a sufficiently clear citation method during writing so that it is clear for the reader whichpart of the student’s text is borrowed, whatis the cited publication or other material,and to which section of the publication or material the citation refers to (often page numbers).
Even though appropriate marking of references is essential to avoid plagiarism, it alone is not always sufficient.If a student uses a direct quotationfrom a source in his/her text, the cited part must be indicated with quotation marks.
It is also fraudulent to copy references to publications from a source to createthe impression that the writer has used more literature than he/she really has.
6 Teachers are obliged to make students aware ofgood practices in the academic community
According to the ethical principles of the University, teachers are obligated to support students’ learning, the development of their academicway of thinking and intervene inacademic fraud when they notice it.
The best way for teachers to succeed in this dutyis to make sure that they participate actively in the supervision of their students and show that theyare interested in the output of their students and give feedback onit. Teachers must also express that they do not expect their students to be able to write as elegantly and clearly as the authorities of the field, but that they are genuinely interested in how the students understand and analyse ideas and how these skills develop.
Special attention should be paid to the guidance of international students. The rules of appropriate academic writing are not the same in all cultures, and the rights of a researcher to his/her own study are not always as individual-centred as they are in Finland. A teacher should describeand discuss with students the operating methods of the Western academic community.
In general, teachers must genuinely try to understand the reasons why students may become guilty of academic fraud.This will provide better means to prevent fraudulent practice.
In case of academic fraud other than plagiarism, it can generally be assumed that a student knows, on the basis of general norms,if his/her actions are fraudulent or not.Regardless of that, teachers should highlight the importance of the University community’s ethical principles to studentsrightat the beginning of their studies and explain the short-sightedness of academic fraud when considering the targets of university studies. They should also discuss generally known ways to commit academic fraud and emphasise the reprehensibility of fraudulent practice. Even though skills to search, find and summarise information are important, it must be underlined to students that the ultimate target of university studies is to learn to analyse and interpret information.
It can also be assumed that in flagrant cases of plagiarism (e.g. presenting another person’s thesis as one’s own work) a student is capable to understand, on the basis of general norms,that his/her actions are fraudulent. However, teachers have the duty to guide students to adopt good practices of academicwriting and understand that these practices are absorbed gradually during one’s studies through guidance and practical experience. The teaching of good practices must be integrated intothe curriculaof different subjects because the methods of academicwriting differ to a certain extent in different disciplines.
However, guidance should do more than simplyinstruct students to avoid plagiarism. From this perspective, a student may act in an acceptable way without having adopted the good practices of academicwriting.Sometimes this is called ‘a grey area’ between plagiarism and good academicwriting. For example, a student may take a paragraph fromanotherworkand rewrite it in his/her own words in anessay without adding his/her own ideas, and then report the source appropriately. If a student’s essay is only a collection of paragraphs formulated in this manner, itis merely a repetition of other authors’ texts written ‘in one’s own words’. As an academic work, the essay would not substantially differ from what the student would have compiled had he/she used direct quotations in quotation marks one after another.This kind of an essay would hardly meet its general learning targetsto develop academic thinking and skills. Often this kind of action indicates disregard for the goals of university studies.
7 Using the plagiarism detection software
The University of Jyväskylä offers its teachers plagiarism detection software for checking text-format studentassignmentsthat have been submitted for evaluation. Because the checkedtexts remain in the software database, the use of the programmewill also protect students’ work from plagiarism.
The plagiarism detection software must be used to check all theses (bachelor’s, master’s and licentiate theses as well as doctoral dissertations). The thesis supervisor asks the student to send the thesis to be checked with the plagiarism detection softwarewhen the student plans to submit the thesis for evaluation, at the latest. If the thesis has several supervisors, they must agree who is responsible for checking the thesis with the plagiarism detection software at least once. The evaluators of a thesis/dissertation(includingthe preliminary examiners in case of a dissertation) must be informed that they may, upon request, getthe report produced by the software and use it when evaluating the thesis if they so desire.
The University of Jyväskyläalso recommends teachers to require from their students that the plagiarism detection software be used as widely as possible for other student performance documents as well.
Teachers should utilise the plagiarism detection software of the University as systematically as possible. At the same time, it should be understood that no tool alone can detect all cases of fraud.
If a teacher wants to check a document that counts towards the completion of a study unit, the student’s permission is needed because documents checked with the plagiarism detection software are saved in the software database. When the student is askedto submit thedocument for checking, he/she must first approve an agreement text that allows the document to be sent for checking.
When a student gives the approval to check his/her document with the plagiarism detection software, the document is saved in the software database. After that, the document is used when the works of students atother universities or higher education institutions are checked with the system.However, as the owner of the copyright, the student can prohibit the use of his/her document as a comparison source in the plagiarism detection software.In this case, the student’s document is checked but its content will not be visible in the analyses of other documents checked with the software.
If a student does not give permission to use the plagiarism detection software, he/she must contact the teacher who instructed the student to use the software and agree on further actions. Documents not checked with the plagiarism detection software must be checked against plagiarism with other means.
The teacher is responsible for interpreting the comparison results produced by the plagiarism detection software. Even though intentional plagiarism is reprehensible academic fraud, the teacher must consider if similarities between the student’s text and texts in the software database aremerely an indication of incompetence rather than of intentional fraud. In the former case, the teacher may use the comparison results from the software as a pedagogic toolto guide the student. The teacher has the right to limit the number of times he/she gives feedback ondifferent versions of a document written by the student.
A reportsubmitted to a teacher from the plagiarism detection software must be saved at least for a year from the approval of the study unitif the comparison of the student’s text has not led to a fraud investigation.This saving period also applies to pre-examinations of a document produced by a student. If the report is related to a fraud allegation in a studyunitand has led to an investigation, the report must be attached to other documents related to the matter and saved for at least ten years after the case of suspected fraud has been resolved.
8General principles for dealing with suspected fraud
Anycase of suspected academic fraud is always investigated.When investigating acase of suspected fraud, it is important to document all investigation phases and evidence to prove the fraud as meticulously as possible. It is also important that the student is given the right guaranteed in the Administrative Procedure Act to ”submit an explanation on thedemands and information which may have an effect on its decision” (Administrative Procedure Act 434/2003, Section 34). There is no obligation for a hearing if the matter is immediately rejected asgroundless. The student has the right to be assisted bycounselat the hearings.
A central principle inhandling a case of suspected fraud is that the teacher or other staff memberwho noticed the fraud does not personally carry out the investigation, does not requestastatementon the matter from the studentbeforeit is resolved,and does not make decisions on possible consequences.The teacher has the duty to document,as clearly as possible,the evidence on which the fraud allegation is based. An exception is a situation in which the teacher assesses that the student’s actions may be a result of incompetence rather than an evident attempt at fraud.In this case, the teacher can decide not to start a fraud investigation but to guide the student to act appropriately. In these cases, the teacher informs the student how the student should correct the text before it is evaluated. To assess the situation, the teacher may contact the student before giving a notice to startan investigation.