Academic Honesty

Milne Library, SUNY Oneonta

Students are expected to be honest in their academic work. The College at Oneonta defines academic dishonesty as "any act by a student that misrepresents or attempts to misrepresent to an instructor or any College official, the proficiency or achievement of that student or another student in any academic exercise for the purpose of influencing a grade on a piece of assigned work, on an examination or quiz or in a Course as a whole, or that is intended to alter any record of a student's academic performance by unauthorized means". It is important for both students and faculty to become familiar with the College at Oneonta Academic Dishonesty policy and procedures.

The vast majority of students are honest. However, it is important that plagiarizers and cheaters be caught as they can adversely affect the honest students as well as harm themselves by getting into the habit of cheating/taking the easy way out. There are many ways to accomplish this.

Turnitin.com can be used to find instances of internet plagiarism. Information on the use of Turnitin is available from the College at Oneonta TLTC.

Check the contents of databases from the Milne Library Full Text Databases (such as Expanded Academic ASAP, Lexis-Nexis, Literature Resource Center). These are *not* searched by Turnitin. Reference Librarians can usually detect plagiarism of subscription databases.

Use a full-text search engine such as Google or AltaVista. Enter a unique phrase, one that you suspect is not the student's words, "inside quotation marks" to retrieve an exact match.

Honest students sometimes inadvertently either plagiarize or fail to properly cite references.

Here are some additional resources for determining plagiarized student work.