Academic Integrity

Good organisation of all your readings or sources of information will help you to find your sources easily and quickly. 

At university, you read a lot of information:

• From different sources e.g. online journals, printed books, websites 
• In different formats PDF, Word, PNG, JPG, PowerPoint etc.

A good organisation system is essential in managing your materials so that you can find references quickly and easily.

At the start of the semester:

• Set up folders and sub-folders for each topic and sub-topic
• Save all readings/sources in a way that makes sense to you
• Save to your folders on a regular basis – daily or weekly
• Create a back-up folder on an external hard drive or in the cloud
• Use a reference management system such as EndNote
• Use note-taking systems such as Evernote, OneNote or Notion

Don’t leave assignments until the last minute!

A key aspect of managing your references, to ensure you don’t accidentally plagiarise, is to start your assignments early so that you have plenty of time to check you have included ALL the sources you used in developing your assignment, before you submit. 

Leaving assignments till the last minute can result in rushing to submit and forgetting to check that you have referenced ALL your sources and in the correct format, according to the guidelines in your student handbook. 

Leave plenty of time to:

• Check you have included all sources you have used in developing your assignment. 
• Ensure you are using the correct referencing style
• Ensure you reference each type of source correctly e.g. journal articles will be referenced differently to book chapters or a website.

Referencing while note-taking is essential in ensuring academic integrity and avoiding accidental plagiarism.

• Before you start any reading or note-taking, put your reference at the top of the page. That way you will always have the references when you need them
• NEVER take notes without including your references
• Make sure you put quotation marks around any direct quotes you put in your notes so you can distinguish them from your own paraphrasing or summarising
• You might take great notes but if you can’t find the reference to the source you used, you can’t include the information in your assignment