City University of Hong Kong
Academic Honesty
Fundamental principles for knowledge discovery and innovation
City University of Hong Kong
Academic Honesty

Useful tips to follow principles of academic honesty

Tip 1 - Start early and manage your time

Often, plagiarism and other problems of academic honesty happen when students have managed their time poorly and need to finish an assignment in a hurry. In order to avoid this situation, get started on your assignment early, obtain clarification regarding any questions you have about the assignment, and make a good plan of time management. Don’t leave everything until the last minute!

Tip 2 - Ask your teachers about their expectations, do not assume

Different teachers who teach different subjects have different expectations about the way you report your work, including the way you cite and reference the prior work of others, the use of GenAI and the extent from GenAI, and whether other learning tools (e.g., grammar checking tools, paraphrasing tools) are allowed. If you’re not sure what the expectations are, ask your teachers – they’ll be happy to clarify things for you.

Tip 3 - Always make careful notes

There is so much information available today that it can be difficult to keep track of it all. To solve this problem, make sure that you take good notes on the sources you read, i.e., books, journals, websites, and so on.

Tip 4 - Use a reference manager

Reference managers allow you to easily collect citations, include them in your work and create a reference list. Some good ones are:

Tip 5 - Get a citation guide and refer to it

It can be daunting learning all of the conventions of citation and referencing, like what format to use for in-text citations and entries in the reference list. To solve this problem, refer to a citation guide when you are writing your assignments. Remember, there are lots of different styles and you should ask your teacher which one they want you to use. The most common styles are summarized in the CityU Library Citing Sources of Information Research Guide as well as under citing and referencing in this tutorial.

Tip 6 - If in doubt, cite the source

You may sometimes be uncertain about whether you should cite a source or not, as when, for example, you think the information may be common knowledge. When in doubt, it is always safer to cite the source. Also, be reminded to cite the source if you use ideas or information generated by GenAI.

Tip 7 - Do your own work

If you have been asked to do an individual assignment, your teacher’s expectation is that you have done the work yourself. In these cases, make sure that the work that you hand in really is your own, and be careful about the extent of help that you give and receive.

Tip 8 - Follow the same principles for online/open-book assessment

If you are attending an open-book assessment and/or taking an online assessment, apply the same principles of academic honesty to complete the assessment. Make sure you cite the source.

Tip 9 - Do not give a ‘reference’ copy of your work to someone

If you provide someone else with a ‘reference’ copy of your work, they could submit it as their own work without your knowledge, or even pass it to others to use. This kind of use would have serious consequences for you, as you would be involved in committing an act of academic dishonesty.

Tip 10 - Talk about academic honesty with your classmates

Sometimes you are asked to work in groups on university assignments, where the whole group jointly takes responsibility for an assignment. To make sure that you and your groupmates follow the same principles of academic honesty, discuss these principles with your classmates. Also, encourage your groupmates to get started on their work early so they don’t run into time management problems (see Tip 1 above).

Tip 11 - Learn more about academic honesty

This tutorial is just a beginning. You can learn more about academic honesty and related information/skills at CityU in a number of ways:

Tip 12 - Ignorance is no excuse

Sometimes students say that they didn’t realize that their conduct breached standards of academic honesty. However, ignorance is no excuse. The aim of this tutorial is to inform you about issues of academic honesty and make you aware of basic expectations. By reading the tutorial and signing your declaration, you agree that you understand the standards of academic honesty and will be bound by them.

Tip 13 - It’s easier to spot plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty than you think

Teachers have access to the Internet, too, as well as to plagiarism detection tools like Turnitin® and other detection tools such as ZeroGPT, AI Text Classifier (OpenAI), etc. If you’re having trouble making a deadline, it’s always better to discuss this with your teacher, rather than submitting work that is not your own and risking the serious consequences of university disciplinary action.