1. Academic Integrity and Plagiarism
Ms Erika Gavillet
Dr Richy Hetherington
I like to start by trying influence any comments I see in the feedback. I know that you are busy with your research projects and you would like sessions in the development programme to be a quick resource to give you absolute answers on the best way to write a thesis or get your dream job. Where possible such as in IT skills session we do try to give clear cut answers however in sessions such as this there is not always a clear obvious answer for what is correct. So the main purpose of this session is to open some of these issues up for you to think about, pointing you to the appropriate resources and allowing you to make your own conclusions.

2. Do you agree to take part?
Yes No
I don’t know yet
If you haven’t seen them before may be wondering what the handsets are for. We’ve decided to use the student response system in this session just to canvass your opinion and ask a few questions. Do forgive me like a kid with a new toy I’ve probably over used it in my slides. I’ve put a couple in here just to see if it works, for questions with one answer the last button you press before I call time will be your answer. For multiple answer questions all the buttons you press will be recorded. The sets are numbered only so we know we’ve got them all, your answers are completely anonymous. Do answer honestly to help the session work.
If you would like to discuss anything I cover just ask as we go that will be fine.
Please leave the handset on the desk, if you happen to take the set away please return it to the graduate school office

3. Which of the following professional bodies are you a member of
General Medical Council
The Health Professions Council
The Science Council
Chartered Scientists
British Association of Accredited Researchers
None of the above
So who provides regulation on the integrity of what scientist do? Which of the following official bodies are you a member of ?

4. Professional Bodies B.A.A.R.
Registers doctors to practise medicine in the UK. Promote and maintaining the health and safety of the public by ensuring proper standards in the practice of medicine.
A regulator protecting the public by registering health professionals ensuring standards of training, professional skills, behaviour and health.
membership organisation representing the learned societies and professional institutions
Anyone practicing medicine is controlled by the General Medical Council, and you need to be a member to be a Medical Doctor, certain other Health Care professionals are regulated by the HPC. The Science council and the Charted scientist do exist but these institutions have no regulatory powers and are probably more for scientists working in industry to show that they are legitimate clever scientist types to their non-scientist colleagues.
So effectively there is no one that sets one particular standards for research. The standards tend to be set by the Peer Review System and by ethical approval for each individual project.
A single chartered mark for all scientists, recognising high levels of professionalism and competence in science
B.A.A.R.
I made that one up, to test your integrity

5. Project Approval
So the way the university monitors that your research project is going to be set up professionally is by getting you and your supervisors to complete the project approval form. Please read it carefully and make sure you understand it is the first part of your professional responsibility is to do that. Once it is signed and handed in the faculty and the University are given the responsibility to you conduct your research as you have suggested it will be done on the form.

6. Ethics advice Research Ethics 14th Feb
Research Governance
Institute of Neuroscience Psychology Ethics Committee
Research Ethics in a Wider context - for 2nd year and above only
Your Handbooks for Research students
I hope you will have all had the chance to attend the Introductory ethics session if not the materials can be accessed online. This will hopefully of provided advice in a broad area.
Those dealing with patients, samples or Tissues should attend the research governance workshop which provide advice on getting appropriate approval
Those dealing with issues of ethics in psychology could can contact the IoN psychology ethics committee who will review there work
For those who are interested in the wider context can take a 2 day course which looks at ethics of not just medical research but all research ethics more broadly. It does effect wider groups Engineers must consider how safe buildings are when researching new designs etc.

7. Funding Integrity Pharmaceuticals manufacturer support
Other interested parties
E.g. Dr Andrew Wakefield
Probably not too much of an issue at your stage but it is worth considering the implications of who is funding your research. If you have an industrial sponsor are you sure your experiments are not influenced by what they are hoping to find.
These companies are funding research and would like results to favour the use of their products but they would want you to be extremely rigorous when conducting your research as it would reflect very badly if the results could be challenged.
Most importantly when you report results it is essential you report these interests, so anyone reading knows that a potential conflict of interests is there.
I’m not going to talk about the case of Andrew Wakefield but how many of you know what he is famous for. 12 years before retraction link is still believed

8. Experimental Integrity: Can the circled data point be dropped
Yes no
Well it depends on the circumstances form the data presented here there is roughly a one in 20 chance that data point is in fitting with the others and if so similar variability could be expected. It may be that this point is not fitting because of some experimental problems. Something went wrong with loading that sample. It was left too long incubating, if you make good notes you will be able to check back and see. The Lab books research diaries session will explain further.

9. Should you publish this result?
sample
Control
Yes No
So you have done an experiment and although your hypothesis predicted the sample would be significantly different from the control you found no such result. Should you publish this result?
If this is one of 3 experiments you have set up to prove your hypothesis and the other 2 experiments confirm the hypothesis you need to have a very good reason why you aren’t publishing this one. Like you think the methodology is flawed and if you were to repeat it correctly the result would be different otherwise it should be included. To let everyone know that you weren’t able to conclusively disprove the null hypothesis.
You should find somewhere to make this result known for the benefit of the scientific community.

10. Is it acceptable to manipulate a gel image for publication or your thesis?
Yes No
You have prepared a gel and it supports your hypothesis. You would like to make this a clear as possible when presenting the work. Is it OK to manipulate the image to make sure it a appears clear. Here I have changed the colour and contrast. But it could be cropping the image.
The answer is it depends on the reason. If you are only trying to make sure the important point is not missed that should be OK. If you are attempting to dismiss other potentially possible pieces of information that is not. In the example given you may have lightened the intensity in an attempt to more accurately determine the size of the largest bands that is probably OK.
If the changes were to hide the fainter bands which potentially were problematic for any hypothesis this is not good. All results need to be displayed.
If you are cropping or moving parts it should be stated and the full unaltered image should also be kept as either an appendix or as a paper’s supplemental data
Also what you can’t do is change one image but not another related image. You can’t make your sample brighter if and leave your controls dull to emphasise a difference.
If you are cutting out a section of an image to move it make it clear that you have done so don’t just put it back together as nothing had happened.
There should be guidance within paper submission notes about what is appropriate and they do use software to detect manipulation, if it is detected alarm bells will be ringing so it is best to be careful. If in doubt don’t change what you’re submitting.
"Gel electrophoresis 2" by Mnolf - Photo taken in Innsbruck, Austria. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

11. Authorship and Acknowledgement
Should a technician who produced results but had no input to design or interpretation of results be an author?
YES NO
You are the sole author of your thesis and any progress reports, if you are not that will be plagiarism that you could be in series trouble for but the majority of journal articles produced by the faculty will have co-authors. There are many interpretations but one thing is relatively consistent authors should only include those who have made a contribution to the work.

12. Open Access Publishing
This method of publishing is OK but you have to be absolutely sure of what has been put up there, citations can continue on well past a retraction. The genie is out of the bottle so to speak.

13. Reproducibility
You read a paper with an interesting experiment but you aren’t sure about the result, you follow the methods but can’t get the same result in the paper.
Is this the authors problem or
your problem?
Authors problem
Your problem
OK I assumed that everyone would have agreed to the first question so just to test the system is working can you answer this one.
OK it seems to be working OK lets continue

14. Maintaining academic integrity in research
Avoiding Misconduct
Fabrication (inventing data)
Falsification (distorting data or results)
Plagiarism (copying)
Consider whether you have an intention to deceive
Falsification, mining the data, selectively choosing
where it becomes problematic is where the intention is not to deceive but with such a strong belief in what seems to you a compelling argument. Then it is up to you to decide if you are being swayed by your own desire to get your ideas across
Stanley Prusiner

15. Duplication, redundancy or self plagiarism
Sending the same article to more than one journal
Using the data twice without a significantly different outcome
Copying your introduction for another piece of work
Using data generated from one degree e.g. MRes or MSc in another PhD
Before I hand over to get more comprehensive details of the rights and wrongs of plagiarism there is something important to cover. Its not strictly plagiarism as it is not copying from someone else but it is also poor practice to pass off you own work on more that one occasion and this can be quite common but is still poor practice. When submitting a journal article you should wait until it has been accepted or rejected before submitting some similar work to another journal that you would not have submitted otherwise.
Also the only time the same data should be used twice is if it is analysed differently, the only exception to this would be if you are publishing work from an internal report or thesis. The same applies to words as tempting as it is to use the same introduction twice you should write specifically what is appropriate on that occasion. It is acceptable to use words from your progress reports in your thesis as this is a continuation of the same work.
It is not acceptable to use parts of work from one degree for another.

16. Ukrio.org

17. Reference Scientists behaving badly
Brian C. Martinson, Melissa S. Anderson & Raymond de Vries
Nature 435, (9 June 2005)
The 'self-plagiarism' oxymoron: can one steal from oneself?
Chrousos GP, Kalantaridou SN, Margioris AN, Gravanis A.
Eur J Clin Invest Mar;42(3):231-2.
Manipulation and Misconduct in the Handling of Image Data
Cathie Martin, Editor-in-Chief The Plant Cell and
Mike Blatt, Editor-in-Chief Plant Physiology
The Plant Cell September 2013 vol. 25 no
Promoting an open research culture
B. A. Nosek et al

18. Academic integrity. Plagiarism – what’s okay and what’s not
Erika Gavillet
Medical Librarian
Walton Library

19. Academic integrity – the dilemma
Show you have done your research…
BUT
…write something new and original
Appeal to experts and authorities…
…improve upon or disagree with experts and authorities
There is a very real tension for people undertaking research and research degrees – the dilemmas of academic integrity.
You are expected to write your own ideas and discoveries and arguments, but also to demonstrate that you know the current debate and theories of others
Okay, so you KNOW the current debate, but you’re expected to discuss, disagree with, or take these ideas further, which often means you have to explain or lay out those arguments or current beliefs.

20. Academic integrity – the dilemma
Demonstrate you ability to write by mimicking what you hear and read…
BUT
…use your own words and voice
Give credit where credit is due…
…make your own significant contribution.
To use language, terms, jargon and phrases that you read shows you have a good grasp of the look, tone and register of well written academic material in your field, but you must be careful that it still sounds like you!
Need to acknowledge where your work springs from, but the whole purpose of the research is to demonstrate your own unique approach to it.

21. Academic integrity – the dilemma
Remember…supervisors and other readers will not be able to tell if plagiarism is deliberate or not.
Over the last few years a number of undergraduate and postgraduate students have been either refused degrees or awarded lesser degrees because it was decided that they had cheated by plagiarising material for dissertations and theses.
Most universities and publishers require you to sign a declaration when you submit your work to say that it is all your own and that you have referenced the work of others wherever you have used it. With the advent of ‘cut and paste’ technology, the internet and so many journals and books now being available online, UK universities in particular are addressing plagiarism and academic integrity as very real issues, and that is for research published from institutions as well as higher degrees awarded by them.

22. Acceptable practice? Plagiarism? Collusion?
You are under pressure with your lab experiment which then goes wrong. Your colleague ran a similar experiment last week and gives you the figures. You use them in your report. Is this:
Acceptable practice?
Plagiarism?
Collusion?

23. Acceptable practice? Plagiarism? Collusion?
When writing your research, you take short phrases from a number of sources, add your own words to make a coherent structure and list all your sources in your bibliography. Is this:
Acceptable practice?
Plagiarism?
Collusion?

24. Tools for detecting plagiarism
JISC software
‘Watermarked’ e journals and books
Internet detection software
Experience
Turnitin and iThenticate
Register, tone, even links left in!

25. One aimed at the academic market….
This one is for publishers, news agencies, companies, law firms and public sector organisations.

26. This one is for publishers, news agencies, companies, law firms and public sector organisations.

27. Tools for detecting plagiarism
JISC software
‘Watermarked’ e journals and books
Internet detection software
Experience
Turnitin and iThenticate
Register, tone, even links left in!

28. Types of plagiarism
Okay. What counts as plagiarism? What does it look like? How do you know what’s acceptable and what isn’t? What is recognised as plagiarism? Well, there are several different types…

29. For the following slides, demonstrating examples of plagiarism, I am indebted to South Bank University’s website:
Acceptable and Unacceptable use of non-original material
[Accessed 5th May 2008]

30. ‘Copy and paste’
The writer copies the exact words that have already been published into their work without any indication of their origin.

33. Disguise Some words are changed from the original source.
Arguably a more serious offence than ‘copy and paste’ as it indicates a deliberate attempt to pass the work off as the writer’s own.

34. So, the black text is the student’s own, the red text are the words which remain from the original, and the crossed through words are those which have been deleted

35. Incorrect referencing
Where it is not made clear within the writer’s work which parts of the writing have been taken from the original source and which belong to them.

36. The problem here is that although the first section acknowledges the author, the second paragraph, which comes much further down the page of text is also lifted from the Culwin’s work, is so far removed from the original reference that it now looks like the writer’s work.

37. Mosiac
Fragments of the original are scattered between parts that the writer has written.
The sequence of ideas and examples show that it has been lifted directly from the original source.
The writer’s comments between add no value or make no difference to the writing.

39. Multiple sources Where content is mixed from more than one source.
This does not make the writing any more original or valuable

41. Paraphrasing
In this example, nearly all the words are those of the writer
However, the sequence, the ideas, the references used to support the arguments etc are identical to the original source.

43. Correct but inappropriate usage
No attempt to mislead or cheat…correctly acknowledged and formatted…
But so little of the writer’s work that it is pointless!

45. So…when should you give credit?
When you are referring to someone else’s words or ideas
When using information gained through interviewing someone
This means not just books and journals, but websites, computer program, personal communication (letters, or conversations)

46. So…when should you give credit? (cont..)
When you reproduce or reprint any diagrams, illustrations, charts or photos
When you choose to use the exact words or ‘unique phrase’ from another’s work
If you use an illustration, chart or photo without proper referencing you might not only be guilty of plagiarism but also be in breach of the copyright law.!

47. Making sure you are safe
Techniques to ensure that you can’t be accused of plagiarism…

48. When researching, note-taking, and interviewing
Make sure you indicate clearly when the words belong to someone else – use a ‘Q’ in the margin, or quotation marks.
Always keep a full record of your sources (page numbers, titles etc)
Always acknowledge in your final text using in-text citation, footnotes, bibliography, quotation marks or indirect quotations.
Keep proper notes and records. Half the time, it’s not because a person is deliberately plagiarising, but because they can’t be bothered to go back to the library to check! A bibliographic package like EndNote looks after the correct formatting of references for you –so use it!

49. When paraphrasing or summarising
Write your paraphrase or summary from memory – don’t look at the original text. Then check with the original for accuracy.
In your work, begin by giving credit: According to Esther Blodgitt…
If you want to use a unique phrase, put it in quotation marks: The Prime Minister’s response to the opposition was a “poisonous diatribe” (Blodgitt).
Yes, you can do this, but remember the rules…

50. Quotes
Don’t use too many – it starts to look like there’s not many of your own ideas in your work
Mention the author somewhere in the sentence and use quotation marks.

51. Acceptable practice? Plagiarism? Collusion?
You have found a fantastic article. You copy out a few sentences word for word, include quotation marks and an in text citation and include full details in your bibliography. Is this?
Acceptable practice?
Plagiarism?
Collusion?

52. You want to use a graph from a textbook
You want to use a graph from a textbook. You contact the author who gives you permission and you reference it in your bibliography. Is this:
Acceptable practice?
Plagiarism?
Collusion?

53. Where to go for further information
Citing references by David Fisher
Citing your references by David Bosworth
Electronic styles: a handbook for citing electronic information by Xia Li
University Student Handbook
Academic integrity pages on the ResIN website:
General academic good practice:

54. If you have been listening…
Thank you!
This is your opportunity to comment or ask questions… Or