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Department of History

Academic Integrity

In this section:

Understanding Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is a fundamental value of your work as a student at Warwick and in the discipline of History. Warwick defines academic integrity as a commitment “to honesty in academic work, giving credit where we’ve used others’ ideas and being proud of our own achievements.” Historians are expected to maintain high professional and ethical standards, for example in our use of evidence and our citation of sources. All students should be able to demonstrate intellectual ownership of their work, and are responsible for the work that they submit for assessment.

A failure to follow these principles of academic integrity is called “Poor Academic Practice.” A failure to follow these principles that gives you, or has the potential to give you, an unfair advantage is called “Academic Misconduct.”

University regulations on Academic Integrity are governed by Regulation 11.

Poor Academic Practice

Poor Academic Practice is the failure to correctly quote, acknowledge or cite your sources. It should always be possible for your reader to follow your sources from your footnotes, and it should always be clear which words and ideas are yours, and which are those of the sources you are citing (i.e. quotations). See the section on referencing in this handbook for more information about how to cite your sources correctly. Poor Academic Practice does not usually suggest that you have attempted to gain an unfair advantage, but rather that you have failed to properly acknowledge your sources. This might include the failure to:

  • put quote-marks around text that has been quoted verbatim from another source, even if you have cited the source in a footnote or in the bibliography
  • cite the source of quoted text, even if you have put the text in quote-marks
  • cite the source of text that you have closely paraphrased from another source
  • cite the source of ideas or concepts that you have borrowed from another source

There is no formal penalty for Poor Academic Practice, but the work is likely to receive lower marks in line with the department marking criteria. In such cases, the overall mark for the piece of work is determined by the marker using their academic judgment.

The department and the university understands that in your first year, you are still learning and you may not fully understand the principles of academic integrity or the correct way to quote and reference in your work. However, substantial and repeated Poor Academic Practice, especially in the second and final years, may amount to Academic Misconduct.

Academic Misconduct

The University of Warwick defines academic misconduct as follows:

Academic misconduct are acts or omissions by a student which give or have the potential to give an unfair advantage in an examination or assessment, or might assist someone else to gain an unfair advantage, or an activity likely to undermine the integrity essential to scholarship and research. (Regulation 11)

Academic misconduct is the intention to obtain an unfair advantage, or knowingly engaging in a behaviour that has the potential to give an unfair advantage, irrespective of whether such advantage is actually obtained. (Regulation 11)

Plagiarism

The most recognised form of academic misconduct in History is plagiarism. Warwick defines plagiarism as 'presenting someone else's work or ideas as the student's own.'

This definition applies to all assessed work, including but not limited to essay plans, essays, exams, podcasts, blogs and other digital formats.

The reproduction of work includes the following:

  • copying, i.e., repeating phrases or sentences word-for-word
  • modifying, i.e., closely paraphrasing another's work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation
  • borrowing, i.e., presenting another person’s ideas or concepts as your own, even if you do so in your own words
  • self-plagiarism, i.e. reproducing work that you have already presented for a summative assessment.

Other Forms of Academic Misconduct

Further to plagiarism, other kinds of academic misconduct include, but are not limited to:

  • The use of generative AI to create content which is presented as your own work. Please see further guidance about generative AI and academic misconduct below.
  • Contract Cheating. You may not purchase or ask another person to complete assessed work or sit an exam in your place. Always acknowledge any third party assistance (beyond that of your tutor), for example with proof reading or providing references. If you are unclear whether any third party assistance is acceptable please discuss with your module tutor or personal tutor in advance of submitting the piece of work.
  • Collusion. If you allow another student to copy some or all of your work, even if you consider this is helping them, you may be considered to have cheated alongside the student who copied the work. Whilst the Department encourages students to work together and read each other’s work, all work submitted should be the student’s own.
  • Collusion in examinations. The rule about collusion is stricter for examinations than for other coursework. In examinations, collusion occurs whenever students have during the exam contact with another student sitting that exam or another person, and such contact relates at least partially to the subject of the examination. This includes contact through any media (phone, websites, question boards, forums, social media, etc.) as well as face-to-face contact. Take-home assessments are treated as examinations for the purposes of plagiarism.
  • Deliberate attempts to mask plagiarism. The Department may ask for work to be presented in other formats if it suspects students are deliberately trying to mask one of the forms of plagiarism identified above.

Sanctions for Academic Misconduct

Sanctions for academic misconduct depend on the severity of the offence and in the History Department usually involves a reduction in the mark for the assessed work to reflect the impact of the academic misconduct. A common sanction is the reduction of the mark to zero.

Procedure in Cases of Suspected Academic Misconduct

Cases of suspected academic misconduct are identified by markers in the first instance, sometimes with the help of Turnitin software (see below). The marker may judge that a piece of work counts as poor academic practice, in which case they will mark the work as usual, taking the poor practice into account in their mark and/or feedback.

Alternatively, the marker may judge that the case is more serious, in which case they will refer the case to the Academic Conduct Panel, which is made up of staff from the department. Members of the panel examine the case and make an initial judgment about whether it is poor academic practice or academic misconduct.

If the panel decides it is poor academic practice, the work is returned to the marker, who marks it using their academic judgment, as explained above. If the panel suspects it is academic misconduct, the student is invited to an interview to discuss the case. Especially in cases of suspected inappropriate use of AI, the interview may include a viva to determine whether the student can demonstrate intellectual ownership of the work submitted. After the interview, the panel then decides which penalty to impose and the student is informed of this decision in writing via email. Students who are called to interview by the Academic Conduct Panel will receive further guidance about the process from the History Office, and can seek support from their Personal Tutor, Wellbeing Services, or the Student Union Advice Centre.

Turnitin Software

The University uses third-party software called 'Turnitin' to detect plagiarism in students’ written work. All work submitted on Tabula is run through this software. The software compares the submission to a database of other work submitted at Warwick and at other universities in the UK and around the world. It also compares the submission to a range of other sources, from scholarly articles to blog posts. Submissions that receive a high score on Turnitin are then scrutinised by the marker to check for poor academic practice or academic misconduct. Markers can also identify cases of poor academic practice and academic misconduct in submissions that receive a relatively low Turnitin score, based on their own knowledge of the topic. In sum, Turnitin is a tool that markers use in conjunction with their own judgment.

image of a turnitin report

AI and Academic Misconduct

The History Department Policy on Artificial Intelligence can be found in the AI section of this handbook.

AI should NEVER be used to gain an unfair advantage or to create content which is presented as your own work. This is Academic Misconduct (see above).

While you may find it useful to use AI as one of many tools as you go about your assessments, you should ensure that you do not use AI in place of your own learning or thought processes. Intellectual ownership of your work includes critical reflection and analysis, for example in the development of your argument or structure. Your essays should always be written in your individual voice, rather than the voice of a machine.

A good rule of thumb is that you should not use AI for any part of your assessments that you would not ask another human to do. You wouldn’t ask your friend to plan your essay for you, or to come up with an argument for you, or to rewrite a paragraph for you, so don’t use AI for these tasks either.

A failure to disclose the use of AI, or the use of a misleading description of its use, may have significant consequences for your studies and may be prejudicial in any later Academic Misconduct investigations should they arise. As a result, you are advised to keep good records such as screengrabs of any interactions you have with generative AI, in case you are requested to explain further how and why it was used.

Training and Resources for Academic Integrity

All students in History are required to complete the Avoiding Plagiarism Moodle course at the beginning of each year. This is designed for students in any discipline. Once you have completed the course, please download the certificate and upload it to Tabula so there is a record that you have done the training. The deadline for uploading your certificate to Tabula is Friday 11 October 2024. Please note that the completion of the training and uploading of the certificate constitutes a monitoring point.

In addition, the History department offers the following history-specific resources for understanding plagiarism:

University-wide Resources for Avoiding Academic Misconduct

The University’s regulations on academic misconduct are contained in University Regulation 11, Academic Integrity.

The University also has a Proofreading Policy that sets out what the University considers to be appropriate with regards to proofreading and what checks should be in place when proofreading is undertaken.

Other resources for students are available on the Academic Integrity page.

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