Boğaziçi University

Department of Chemistry 

Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism Policy

Academic Dishonesty

We expect Boğaziçi University students to graduate with academic honesty regardless of how high or low their grades are. Therefore, the goal of this document is to inform you about definition, examples, and policy of the department regarding this important issue. Academic dishonesty involves plagiarism, resubmitting an already assessed work, fabrication of data, exam cheating, working together in an exam or assignment although it is not authorized, contract cheating and impersonation.

Of course, there will be consequences for such acts. In the situation that homework, assignment, lab report, etc is copied, the students who are involved will share the penalties equally irrespective of who copied from whom.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism (“intihal” in Turkish) is the act of submitting other’s words and ideas without appropriate acknowledgement. It doesn’t matter whether plagiarism is intended or not. Below are some examples of plagiarism (directly quoted from Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism Statement of the B.U. Sociology Department):

  • “Having someone else write a paper or complete an assignment on your behalf.
  • Buying an essay from someone or from a research service and turning it in as your own work.
  • Copying verbatim or in part from another published, unpublished, or an electronic source without giving proper credit to the one from whom the work was copied.
  • Forgetting to put quotation marks to texts that are taken word by word.
  • Use of excessive quotations even when including proper citations to a point that there is no original work.
  • Having incomplete or incorrect references.
  • Not documenting the source when paraphrasing.”

Paraphrasing also should be done carefully. Otherwise, it will still be considered as plagiarism when (https://wts.indiana.edu/writing-guides/plagiarism.html):

“the writer has only changed around a few words and phrases, or changed the order of the original’s sentences.”

Here is an example (quoted from the University of Toronto website):

https://www.chemistry.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/current-students/plagiarism#plagiarism-accordion-3

Original sentence: “Those complexes that contain unpaired electrons are attracted into a magnetic field and are said to be paramagnetic, while those with no unpaired electrons are repelled by such a field and are called diamagnetic”. (Synthesis and Technique in Inorganic Chemistry (G. S. Girolami, T. B. Rauchfuss and R. J. Angelici)

The following are unacceptable paraphrases that are plagiarism:

  • “Complexes that contain unpaired electrons are those that are attracted to a magnetic field. These are called paramagnetic, while those with no unpaired electrons are repelled by a magnetic field and are said to be diamagnetic.”
  • “Those complexes that contain paired electrons are repelled by a magnetic field and are said to be diamagnetic, whereas those with no paired electrons are attracted to such a field and are called paramagnetic.”
  • “Compounds that have unpaired electrons are attracted to a magnetic field and are called paramagnetic. Compounds with no unpaired electrons are repelled by this field and are said to be diamagnetic.”

The following webpages give some examples on how plagiarism can be avoided:

http://www.buowl.boun.edu.tr/fbuowlstudentsinfo.htm

https://www.chem.indiana.edu/about/plagiarism/