Integrity of Scholarship Agreement

Integrity affects all aspects of our lives, and pertains not only to academic matters, but to our personal and professional relationships. The IEEE Professional Society—the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers—has published Plagiarism Guidelines as part of an effort to cope with the problem.

This document constitutes an agreement by the student to abide by the rules regarding Integrity of Scholarship which are described here. All students enrolled in this course implicitly agree to abide by these policies and will seek authorized assistance when in need of help.

Academic discourse is rooted in the principle of honesty, and the lack of integrity in scholarship undermines community spirit. Plagiarism is dishonest and will not be tolerated in this course. Incidents of plagiarism will be taken seriously, and could result in your expulsion from the University. Authorized course assistance is available in person and via email from the Instructor, Teaching Assistants, tutors and OASIS.

While you may discuss the assignments with your classmates (or other teams if team work is authorized by the instructor), any work you turn in must be your own. For programming assignments this means that you must not use someone else’s code, nor code you wrote for another course, unless the instructor authorizes it. You must not look at someone else's code nor take written notes when discussing their solution, nor anytime afterward. Similarly, you must not discuss the details of how you arrived at your solution with someone else not on your team.

It may seem innocent to simply "borrow" from a source, and there are cultural differences in what is considered reasonable. But this is a serious matter and shouldn’t be taken lightly. For example, while writing a paper, you recall a catchy phrase you once read in a novel. This phrase serves your purposes well, as it provides a metaphor that helps you emphasize a point you are are trying to make in your paper. The appropriate way to handle this situation is to treat the phrase as a quotation, and to cite the source so that the author is given credit for their contribution.

This example illustrates two important principles. First, you are required to clearly distinguish your contribution(s) from others. Second, your contribution must not depend in an essential way on that of others. This second principle is a bit more subtle, but here is a concrete example to illustrate.

Let’s say you turned in someone else’s short story as your own, and you faithfully acknowledged the source. Trouble is, where is your contribution?

There can be shades of gray. For example, is it reasonable to use code provided by a classmate that implements common utilities such as reporting the time of day or outputting the host name of the processor the program is running on?

When handled appropriately, code sharing is good for a community and good for the class. When such activity is deemed appropriate, the instructor will communicate instructions to the class. Individual cases may also be considered. Note the following policy concerning code sharing and reuse.

Code reuse and sharing

Except under conditions that the instructor authorizes, code may be neither shared nor re-used, including code written for another class. In cases where sharing is authorized, sharing must be transparent. This means that in addition to citing the code’s author, you must also put code provided by others in files that are separate from your own code. In addition, you must not intermingle within the same file code that you wrote and code written by others (An obvious exception is an included header file, which by design must appear in your source code).

Be sure to respect an individual’s intellectual property rights; merely citing another’s contribution without asking their permission doesn’t avoid the legal implications, and you must follow any rules and restrictions imposed by the code’s author. If you have been given explicit permission to use code (say from a classmate), you must communicate that information to me before I can consider giving you permission to use that code.

Remember, you must always receive the instructor’s permission before using code you didn’t write yourself, or that you wrote for another course, and you mustn’t violate any intellectual property rights.

Here is a list of things you must not do, which is not exhaustive:

• Copy the work of someone else and submit it as your own.
• Allow, request or hire someone to do the work for you, which is subsequently submitted as your own work
• Work on an exam or assignment for someone else.
• Make available to others answers, keys, source code or other documentation useful in completing an assignment, or procure or accept such material. This includes students in past, current, and future offerings of the course, and applies to electronic transmissions including email, web pages, ftp, and so on, as well as hard copy such as source code listings.
• Submit for credit material that had been previously submitted to another course for credit, without first obtaining permission from the instructor. If you do get permission from the instructor, then you must cite any co-author(s), i.e. a lab parter.
• Collaborate with others to develop, complete or correct course work except as explicitly authorized by the Instructor.
• Use words, text, or program source written by someone else without citing the source appropriately. Be sure to give the author(s) credit, consistent with any statement they require that you include in your code. The use of such material must be authorized and shall not infringe upon intellectual property rights. Every figure or sentence fragment must be appropriately decorated with quotation marks or indention to clearly indicate that someone else wrote the text. In addition, the passage must be labeled with a citation or citation number which refers to a footnote or bibliographic entry. Citing a paper once is not enough. Remember: citations shall be used to illuminate a viewpoint which you hold. They are not a substitute for expressing your own ideas in your own words.
• Alter a graded paper or exam and submit for re-grading.
• Employ any aids or devices excluded by the instructor in carrying out course work.

A student violating this policy will be reported to the university for administrative action, according to the UCSD Policy on Integrity of Scholarship as described in the UCSD General Catalog and in the Committee on Educational Policy Academic Senate Web Page. Possible actions include probation or expulsion from UCSD, in addition to any academic penalty imposed by the instructor in the course. Academic penalties include receiving a zero (0) for the assignment(s) or exam(s) in question and Failing (an 'F' or 'NP' grade) the course.

Each student is assumed to be familiar with the policies mentioned above and the course policy as described in this document.   If you have any questions about these policies, be sure to discuss them with the instructor. 

Maintained by [Sun Jan 6 21:36:09 PST 2013]