According to the International Center for Academic Integrity, Academic Integrity represents the moral value and ethical standard upheld within academia. It is the commitment to honesty, trustworthiness, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage in all scholarly activities.
As a UNB student, it is critical that you are familiar with both the university wide Academic Offenses regulations, and specific course policies that can be found in your syllabi. While this Research Guide focuses on writing and citation best practices, the policy also includes other forms of academic misconduct, including
If your instructor feels that you may have engaged in Academic Misconduct, they can flag this, and begin a process to investigate. Depending on the severity and frequency of your offense(s), consequences can include failing the assignment, class, being suspended for a term, or even withdrawal from the university. Therefore, it is critical to protect your Academic Integrity. See the below resources to explore best practices in protecting Academic Integrity and avoiding plagiarism.
There are also experts in the Writing Centre who can support you in ensuring you adhere to Academic Integrity policies.
Explore the tab on Demonstrating Academic Integrity to learn more about how to demonstrate that you've acted with Academic Integrity. There is also a Student Advocate who can support you in any academic appeals - whether they be medical, compassionate or related to academic misconduct.
To illustrate the work you've put into assignments, and to avoid accusations of Academic Misconduct, it can be helpful to document your research and writing process.
While searching for sources may just feel like a prerequisite to writing, it can be a critical process of the assignment, and this process can be documented to illustrate your original work. Consider using a log, or Reference Management Software to keep track of the sources you've found and annotations or notes you've made about these resources.
In tools like Zotero, you can save resources that you will use throughout the course of your assignment. You can also 'tag' them, leave notes, and even mark up/annotate PDFs if available. Again, this can demonstrate that you've identified key resources and pulled out important insights.
No one can write a perfect essay or assignment in a single sitting, without making changes. Effective human writing often requires time and multiple revisions to be polished enough to submit. Therefore, one way of proving that you wrote a piece yourself, and it was not AI generated, is to use track changes, or version control to show how you put together your writing over time.
Obviously, version control is not a perfect way of proving authorship, but it can be a piece of the puzzle you use to protect your academic integrity.
Citing is the act of formally granting credit to an author/creator for their ideas or work that you have borrowed for use in your own work.
Citations are a way to "join the conversation" taking place within the scholarly community. Becoming a scholar (at any level) means joining and adding to the discourse in the field, and citation is a vital part of this.
Before you start, it's essential to find out the citation style you should be using. This can change from course to course, so check your syllabus. You can find general information on citation styles under your Subject Research Guide. Additionally, information using on common citation styles are listed below.
| Citation Style | Official Handbooks | Free Online Resources |
|---|---|---|
| APA | Publication Manual APA (Seventh Edition) | Purdue OWL APA Style Guide |
| MLA | MLA Handbook plus (Ninth Edition) | Purdue OWL MLA Style Guide |
| Chicago | The Chicago Manual of Style (18th Edition) | Purdue OWL CMOS Style Guide |
| IEEE | IEEE Editorial Style Manual | Purdue OWL IEEE Style Guide |
Different disciplines and venues use different formats and structures for citations, so there is no universal way to cite. However, generally, you will have both in-text citations and a reference list.
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It can be very helpful to use a Reference Manager like Zotero to keep track of all your sources, and to generate both in-text citations and reference lists. The library has extensive resources to support you in using Zotero
It can be complicated to decide whether to use AI for assignments. The 2 key points are
If AI is allowed in your class, consider using the below graphic to help you navigate appropriate uses. If it is important that the output is true, the work is your own/original, and you do not have expertise in the area to verify information and take accountability for inaccuracies, it is best not to use GenAI.
Please note that citing is not always the correct way to indicate AI use, also review the below content on writing acknowledgments.
These guidelines suggest describing how you used a GenAI tool, providing the prompt and the relevant output.
In-text Example: (OpenAI, 2024)
Reference List Example: OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (Mar 14 Version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat
Link to Guidelines: https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/how-to-cite-chatgpt
Cite a generative AI whenever you paraphrase, quote or incorporate into your own work any content that was created by it and acknowledge all functional uses of the tool in a note, your text, or another suitable location.
In-text Example: ("Describe the symbolism")
Reference List Example: "Describe the symbolism of the green light in the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald" prompt. ChatGPT, 13 Feb. version, OpenAI, 8 Mar. 2023, chat.openai.com/chat
Link to Guidelines: https://style.mla.org/citing-generative-ai/
IEEE has not published guidance on how to cite Generative AI tools.
Link to Guidelines: https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/your-role-in-article-production/ieee-editorial-style-manual/
Referencing AI-generated material as the primary source is not acceptable.
You should either go to the references provided by the AI tool and reference these, or write an acknowledgement statement.
Link to Guidelines: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/manuscript-preparation/preparing-for-submission.html#g
Indicate your use of GenAI in a footnote or endnote, and do not include a citation to GenAI in your bibliography/reference list unless you also include a publicly available link.
In-text Example: "The following recipe for pizza dough was generated by ChatGPT"
Footnote: 1. Text generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI, March 7, 2024, https://chat.openai.com/chat
Link to Guidelines: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/ed18/part3/ch14/psec112.html
A citation isn't always sufficient to indicate that you've used a GenAI tool. Some of the key reasons to include citations are:
Therefore, consider using an AI acknowledgement to detail your use.
Subject Specialties:
Computer Science, Entrepreneurship
Last modified on March 10, 2025 14:53