Academic honesty

Higher Degree Research Students are expected to perform to high standards of academic writing, and this includes academic and research integrity. The University has two mandatory integrity checks throughout your candidature to identify possible breaches.

All research students are required to complete a first-year integrity check. This involves submitting of your work to a nominated repository to be reviewed by your supervisor.

Your thesis will also be passed through plagiarism detection software following your submission, prior to being passed onto the nominated examiners. SUPRA recommends you have your supervisor review your thesis prior to submission, to ensure you have adhered to all mandatory procedural steps for submission.

Plagiarism & research misconduct

Postgraduate research students can face allegations of plagiarism, academic dishonesty and research misconduct.

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is one form of academic dishonesty. The most common types of plagiarism are: copying another author’s work and presenting it as one’s own; failing to reference another author’s work properly or at all; and paraphrasing another author’s text and then failing to properly reference that work. It is very important to understand that the University refers to the above acts as plagiarism regardless of the student’s intention, so accidentally forgetting to insert a reference is still plagiarism under the University’s definition. A serious form of plagiarism could be considered academic dishonesty or research misconduct.

After you submit your thesis for examination, if it is found to contain significant referencing errors, you may be required to show good cause to provide an explanation. You will only be asked to show good cause if the level of plagiarism does not constitute grounds for an allegation of academic dishonesty or research misconduct. If you are required to show good cause as a result of this process, contact SUPRA for advice and support.

Research misconduct

Research misconduct can involve: falsifying research reports, results or data; failure to declare serious conflicts of interest; misleading ascription to authorship; plagiarism; academic dishonesty; deliberately conducting research without the appropriate ethics approval; and continued breaches of the relevant Research Code of Conduct 2013 policy.

The Research Code of Conduct 2013 sets out the responsibilities of all researchers, academic staff and students at the University. It defines research misconduct and breaches of the code related to plagiarism: 

All allegations of research misconduct will be referred to the Director of Research Integrity. Contact SUPRA for support and assistance if you receive an allegation of breaching academic honesty, research misconduct or plagiarism.