Practicing Academic Integrity Academic integrity is a direct result of responsible research and writing habits.

And those habits are not innate. They are learned through practice. Some habits would be:Using sources to establish your credibility, Using sources to place your work in its proper context, Honoring property rights, Avoiding plagiarism, Honoring and crediting electronic sources.

Using Sources to Establish Your Credibility Research Writing is an exercise in critical thinking that reveals your ability to collect ideas and share them with the reader. By announcing clearly the name of a source, you reveal the scope of your reading on the subject and thus your credibility, as in this students note:

Placing the Source in Its Proper Context Your Sources will reflect all kinds of special interests, so you need to position them within your paper as reliable sources. If you must use a questionable source, tell your reader up front. Heres an example of how one student positioned a source for the reader.

Honoring Property Rights The principle behind the copyright law is relatively simple. In scholarly work there is a seldom compensation, but there is certainly the need for recognition. We do that by providing in-text citations and bibliography entries. As a student you may use copyrighted material in your research paper under a doctrine of fair use as described in the U.S Code, which says: