Contents

Overview 
The relationship between academic freedom and academic integrity
Ethical Approaches
The discovery of a double standard between academic consequences of plagiarism 
by students and by faculty and staff
Legal Approaches
The definition of intellectual property
How do you copyright a current work?
Fair Use: using a portion of a copyrighted material without seeking permission
What happens if a copyright is infringed?
URLs for more copyright information
Practical Approaches
Educate the academic institution
Define clear academic consequences for violations in academic integrity
Enforce consequences for violations
Acknowledgment
Sources
Copyright

Overview

The relationship between liberty and responsibility

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

The relationship between academic freedom and academic integrity

"Academic freedom is a fundamental right in any institution of higher learning. Honesty and integrity are necessary preconditions to this freedom."³

"Academic integrity requires that all academic work be wholly the product of an identified individual or individuals. Joint efforts are legitimate only when the assistance of others is explicitly acknowledged. Ethical conduct is the obligation of every member of the university community and breaches of academic integrity constitute serious offenses. The principles of academic integrity entail simple standards of honesty and truth. Each member of the university has a responsibility to uphold the standards of the community and to take action when others violate them." ³

"Academic work represents not only what we have learned about a subject but also how we have learned it. Therefore it is unethical and a violation of academic integrity to copy from the work of others or submit their work as one's own; all sources, including the sources of ideas, must be acknowledged and cited in ways appropriate to one's discipline. Electronic sources, such as found in the Internet or on the World Wide Web, must also be cited."⁴

Ethical: the responsibility to uphold the standards of the academic community

Legal: the obligation to follow the laws of the land with respect to intellectual property, copyright, and fair use guidelines

Practical: the actual steps one should follow to be ethically and legally compliant

Ethical Approaches to Academic Integrity

"All members of the UCSC academic community have an explicit responsibility to present as their original work only that which is truly their  own. Cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty are contrary to the ideals and purposes of a university and will not be tolerated. Note that plagiarism includes the deliberate misrepresentation of someone else's words and ideas as your own, as well as paraphrasing without footnoting the source. Students and faculty are jointly responsible for assuring that the integrity of scholarship is valued and preserved."

"help colleges and universities develop a viable network for sharing information about academic integrity policies and procedures by providing a forum to identify, affirm, and promote the values of academic integrity among students."

Research highlights (www.nwu.edu/uacc/cai/research/highlights.html) show a rampant decline in academic integrity among students.
 

• On most campuses, over 75% of students admit to some form of cheating.
• Longitudinal comparisons show significant increases in explicit test/examination cheating and unpermitted collaboration.
• Faculty are reluctant to report students for cheating.
• Academic honor codes can effectively reduce cheating.

Cheating on tests
Plagiarism
Presentation of the work of another as one's own
The use of a purchased term paper

"Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the scientific community." Public Health Service www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1996/jan/index_960122.html

For academic integrity to be cherished, and to retain any meaning in the academic world,  there should be clearly-delineated consequences for breaches of this integrity .

Consequences might include:

Student dishonesty: reprimand, lowering of course grade, course failure, suspension or expulsion from institution

Faculty dishonesty: reprimand, unpaid leave of absence, dismissal

Legal Approaches: Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Fair Use Guidelines

• Literary property, both fiction and nonfiction
• Visual images and photographs
• Musical compositions and sound recordings
• Motion picture clips and news footage
• Three-dimensional objects
• Computer programs
• Databases
• Inventions
• Trademarks
• Trade secrets

Copyright Defined (Compton's Online Encyclopedia, AOL)

Copyright is a legal protection extended to those who produce creative works. Originally only for books, copyright now extends to magazines, newspapers, maps, plays, motion pictures, television programs, computer program software, paintings, photographs, sculpture, musical compositions, choreographed dances, and similar works. Essentially a copyright protects an intellectual or artistic property.

This type of property is unusual because it is normally intended for public use or enjoyment. If an individual buys a copyrighted book, it belongs to him as an object. But making copies of it to sell or give away is illegal. This right belongs to the publisher, author, or whoever holds the copyright. If someone wants to copy all or part of a book, an application for permission must be made to the copyright owner, who probably will require payment of a fee.”

A copyright is not a single right, but ia set of rights that gives the copyright owner  the exclusive legal authority to:

• Reproduce the work
• Prepare derivative works
• Distribute copies of the work
• Perform the work publicly
• Display the work publicly
• Authorize others to do any of the above⁶

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to the respective writings and discoveries." That simple phrase is represented today by hundreds of pages of law and thousands of pages of legal cases. It isn't a simple world.

Copyright law first developed at a time when copies were relatively hard to make. You needed a printing press, and you had to reset all of the type for the work. Early in US history, at a point where English law seemed totally irrelevant to us since we'd just broken away from it, publishers in this country imported British books and reprinted them here without giving anything back to the British copyright holder. But it just wasn't within the power of the average person to make copies.

The advent of the photocopy machine (Xerox) began the modern age in copyright, throwing things into disarray. Then came home sound tape
recording, video recording, and now -- the biggest threat of all to copyright -- the computer - the ultimate copying machine.

The change from hard copy to digitized materials is really much greater than just a change in the method of copying. Up until now, there has always been a physical object that could be referred to. Something you could hold in your hand.

And up until now, most copies were degraded forms of the original. Photocopies are of a lower quality than a printed book or article (though that technology is getting better). Home sound recordings are inferior to professionally produced ones. And of course video tapes of TV programs are abysmal. So they aren't really great rivals for the originals.

Now we have digital information, information stored on a computer. That information can be copied exactly, with no loss of quality, with the touch of a few keys. Add the Internet to the mix, and you have a situation where in the information can be copied and sent to thousands of other people with those same few keystrokes....

"The Internet has been characterized as the largest threat to copyright since its inception. The Internet is awash in information, a lot of it with varying degrees of copyright  protection. Copyrighted works on the Net include news stories, software, novels, screenplays, graphics, pictures, Usenet messages and even email. In fact, the frightening reality is that almost everything on the Net is protected by copyright law."

The Copyright Website observes:

"The most interesting aspect of the 'White Paper' is that its commerce based position raises several conflicts with the current state of the Internet, both philosophical and technological. Philosophically, it  comes into conflict with the 'Information wants to be free' mentality  of the Internet. Technologically, it comes into conflict with the fact that there is no longer any mechanical or cost barrier to  reproduction. How these conflicts play out will determine the look  of information delivery."

When can copyrighted material be used without permission?

How do you copyright a current work?

What Happens if a copyright is infringed?

"In the event someone infringes (violates) the exclusive rights of a copyright owner, the owner is entitled to file a lawsuit in federal court  asking the court to:
 
1. issue orders (restraining orders and injunctions) to prevent further violations
2. award money damages if appropriate, and
3. in some circumstances, award attorney fees.
Whether the lawsuit will be effective and whether damages will be awarded depends on whether the alleged infringer can raise one or more legal defenses to the charge. Common legal defenses to copyright infringement are:
 
1. too much time has elapsed between the infringing act and the lawsuit (the statute of limitations defense)
2. the infringement is allowed under the fair use defense
3. the infringement was innocent (the infringer had no reason to know the work was protected by copyright)
4. the infringing work was independently created (that is, it wasn't copied from the original), or the copyright owner

authorized the use in a license."

Public Domain

• Copyright protection has expired or has been lost
• Work prepared by an officer or employee of the US government as part of that person's official duties
• Work placed into the public domain by its author

More copyright information

The UC Santa Barbara library has also compiled a carefully researched list of intellectual property and copyright links at :www.library.ucsb.edu/subj/copyrt.html

Fair Use

The US Constitution provides the mandate and authority for federal copyright laws. Conversely, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression. Fair use is an attempt by the courts to reconcile the two. Four factors⁸ commonly govern fair use:

• Purpose and character of use (commercial or non-profit)
• Nature of copyrighted work (published or unpublished, fact or fiction, available or out of print)
• Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
• Effect of use upon the potential market or value of the copyrighted work

The Stanford University Library has compiled and extensive list of Fair Use and Copyright resources at http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

Practical Approaches to the Preservation of Academic Integrity in Cyberspace

Educate your community

1. Provide faculty/staff workshops to show proper use and citing of Internet-published materials.

A comprehensive source of internet citation is the Electronic References & Scholarly Citations of Internet Sources

Most scholars and students use either the MLA (Modern Language Association) or APA (American Psychological Association) format. Here are instructions for each.

MLA format -- APA format
 

2. Make sure everyone in your academic community (faculty, students, and staff) understands the meaning of plagiarism and the institutional consequences of plagiarism violation.

Plagiarism is the word for the unauthorized copying of sentences or paragraphs that are the work or data of other persons without clearly identifying their origin by appropriate referencing.

Plagiarism and citation of sources,  written or electronic gives a more complete discussion of plagiarism, and how to avoid unintentional plagiarism.

The Mining Company, http://7-12educators.tqn.com/msub15.htm, provides a list of links to articles on plagiarism and other forms of cheating
.

3. Role-play  ethical problems, and discuss how they should be handled. Here are a few examples:
• A student is asked to write a 500 word essay on the American Civil War, describing the significance of the Battle of Gettysburg.

The student goes to a web site, copies it verbatim, and turns it in.
1. View the website:
2. Discuss the following:
• Who owns it?
• Has an ethics violation occurred?
• Has a copyright violation occurred?
• What should be the academic consequences?
3. Examine a more accurate website on the subject at http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/gadd/
• Professor B arrives at college 2 weeks before semester starts, having been hired at the last minute. Professor A, the class mentor, gives hard copies of his personally-developed materials and not-yet published research-summation to assist the new faculty member with class preparation. Each handout page contains the mentor faculty member's name, date, and copyright symbol.

Which of these are legally or ethically inappropriate, and why?

1. Professor B copies the materials as written and distributes them to his class.
2. Professor B carefully cuts off his mentor's name, date, and copyright symbol, and distributes them to his class.
3. Professor B makes Web pages from the materials, using substantially all the content, but not the format, and puts them up on the college web server (open Internet) with no acknowledgement to Professor A.
4. Professor B uses considerable substance of the materials, along with his own additions, and places his own name on each page with no reference to Faculty A.
5. Professor B uses considerable substance of the materials, along with his own additions, and at the bottom of each page, states: developed by faculty A and enhanced by faculty B.
6. Professor B discusses proposed enhancements with Faculty A, seeks his permission for changes, and places both names at the bottom of each page.
 
In each inappropriate case, what should Professor A do? What should the academic department do? What should the college do?
• Professor B delivers a paper at his discipline's national meetings, presenting his "original" research.

Which of these are legally or ethically inappropriate, and why?
1. Professor B does not acknowledge Professor A's contribution to his presentation.
2. Professor B acknowledges Professor A in 7 point type at the bottom of his 3rd PowerPoint slide
3. Professor B seeks Professor A's permission to talk about A's research findings, and gives him full credit in the presentation.
4. Professor B publishes the complete text of his presentation on the internet, giving no credit to Professor A.
Professor A learns about Professor B's inproprieties from a colleague at another college who attends B's presentation.

In each inappropriate case, what should Professor A do? What should the academic department do? What should the college do? What should the professional organization hosting the national conference do?
 

• An impoverished alchemy graduate student with 5 children and a sick mother discovers an inexpensive way to turn lead into gold. He puts his reseach findings onto the college's secure server (Intranet) where only 40 select people (classmates in his graduate seminar and department faculty) have the password.

One of the other alchemy students is searching the internet for information on his favorite topic and discovers his fellow student's research, word for word, without his name, formatting, and patent pending designations published as a link from Faculty B's website on the open internet.

What should the graduate student do? What should the department do? What should the college do?

In case you want some legitimate links on alchemy, try: http://www.healthwwweb.com/LinksAlchem.html

Define and publicize clear academic consequences for ethical infringements

There must be consequences for unethical acts. If there are no consequences, violations of ethical infringements will not be taken seriously by the academic community.

Consequences should be delineated for faculty and staff as well as students.

Consequences should be clear and appropriate. (Case by case often means no action.)
Rutgers University  has an excellent description of different levels of student academic dishonesty  and consequences at each level.

Once consequences are determined, they must be publicized.

Follow through

Acknowledgement

Sources

Copyright

An earlier version of this paper was prepared for ACCCA Learning on the Internet Conference, April, 1998.

Fair Use: Page may be linked to,  duplicated in its entirety, or quoted in part provided author is given full credit, and use is not for profit.