UCD School of English Drama Film Scoil an Bhéarla, na Drámaíochta agus na Scannánaíochta UCD

Academic Integrity Policy

Purpose of this Protocol

This is the Academic Integrity Protocol for the School of English, Drama and Film. It is aligned with the UCD Academic Integrity Policy and the UCD Student Academic Misconduct Procedure. Its purpose is to provide students with resources to support ethical academic practice in the submission of assessed work; to draw attention to what is understood by academic integrity; and to provide information on what will happen if a student’s work is suspected of academic misconduct. Section 4 outlines the School’s Academic Integrity procedures (School of English, Drama and Film Academic Misconduct Protocol)

Introduction

At its very simplest, Academic Integrity means being fair and honest in our academic endeavours, ensuring that we submit work that is our own, not claiming credit for work that was produced by others, and acknowledging where information we use in our writing comes from. Academic misconduct, including plagiarism, on the other hand, is academic theft and is taken very seriously. Academic misconduct is a breach of the UCD Student Code of Conduct and UCD Academic Regulations.  The penalties for it are severe, as outlined in UCD’s Student Academic Misconduct Procedure.

You may be referred to the School’s Academic Integrity Committee for evidenced and substantial cases of Academic Misconduct. At the very least, if plagiarism is found to have taken place, or other forms of academic misconduct have occurred, such as the use of Generative AI tools or the inclusion of AI-generated content/text where explicitly prohibited by a module coordinator, a student will receive grade penalties or you may be referred without decision at School level to the Student Discipline Procedure, which deals with incidents at a higher level than the School.

It is crucially important, then, that you take the time to read this document and related policies so you understand what is meant by academic integrity and academic misconduct, what plagiarism is, and what is involved if a Module Coordinator suspects your work shows evidence of academic misconduct.

Please note that throughout this protocol, academic misconduct comprises different types of plagiarism, including the inappropriate and unacknowledged use of Generative AI (such as Chat GPT, for instance) to generate content for your assignments when the use of such tools has been explicitly prohibited (coded ‘red’ /Stop) or limited (coded ‘amber’/check). The Traffic Light System used by UCD College of Arts and Humanities has been designed to help you maintain ethical academic practices in your submitted work. Please familiarize yourself with it.

In what follows, we will define Academic Integrity and Academic Misconduct; outline your responsibilities in exercising academic integrity (and, so you avoid academic misconduct); offer some examples of plagiarism; provide guidelines for good citation practice; clarify what we mean by the misuse of Generative AI; and explain the use of 'originality checker' software.

We will then outline the process involved in investigating academic misconduct in this School (EDF Student Academic Misconduct Protocol), and briefly summarise the consequences involved when academic misconduct has been confirmed or suspected.

General Definitions

3.1 Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity is the core principle that underpins all academic work. We expect that all students value honesty and act ethically in their research, drafting, writing and editing of their written work for submission. We share UCD's SECCA view that ‘working independently, expressing original ideas, and appropriately acknowledging the ideas of others’ are important practices, skills and behaviour that will help you to flourish during your time in UCD and beyond (see Academic Integrity → Avoiding Academic Misconduct).

3.2 Academic Misconduct

The UCD Academic Integrity Policy  gives a range of examples of what is meant by Academic Misconduct. The School of EDF follows these definitions and examples and a breach of these examples constitutes academic misconduct. They include, but are not limited to the following practices: plagiarism, unauthorised use of generative artificial intelligence, contract cheating, collusion, the most common of which we outline what follows, as described in the UCD Academic Integrity Policy (from section 5) but we ask you to ensure you read the  UCD Academic Integrity Policy so you are clear about what is meant by Academic Misconduct.

3.3 Plagiarism

“Presenting work / ideas taken from other sources without proper acknowledgement.” Plagiarism is a failure to cite or otherwise acknowledge ideas or phrases used in any paper, exercise, assessment or project submitted in a course but gained from another source, such as a published text, another person's work, or materials on the internet.

Plagiarism includes presenting work for assessment, publication, or otherwise, that:

  • uses phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs or longer extracts from published or unpublished work (including from the internet) without appropriate acknowledgement of the source.
  • presents direct extracts without quotation marks or other appropriate indication. It is not sufficient simply to acknowledge the source.
  • copies the same or a very similar idea from a published or unpublished work without appropriate acknowledgement.
  • changes the order of words taken from source material but retains the original idea or concept without appropriate acknowledgement.
  • uses the work of another student without appropriate acknowledgement in a way that exceeds the bounds of legitimate cooperation.

Plagiarism is unacceptable in academic work, even where it arises as a result of:

  • poor referencing;
  • error;
  • inability to paraphrase; or
  • inhibition about writing in the student’s own words.

Self-plagiarism: Reusing one’s own work without citing or acknowledging its original use. This could mean submitting one piece of work for assessment in more than one module.

Misrepresentation of authorship: The submission of someone else’s work (or part thereof) as your own, when the work (all or in part) has been produced by, or purchased from, another person or party.

Contract cheating: a form of academic misconduct where “a person uses an undeclared and/or unauthorised third party, online or directly, to assist them to produce work for academic credit or progression, whether or not payment or other favour is involved”.

Collusion or violating the limits of acceptable collaboration in coursework set by your module coordinator.

Examples of collusion include, but are not limited to:

  • Using another student’s work or part of another student’s work and submitting it for assessment as your own.
  • Giving your work to another student to submit as part of their own assessment.
  • Co-writing work, without acknowledgment, that will be submitted for assessment.
  • Working with other students without permission to produce material that will be assessed or to produce responses to assessment questions.
  • Using social media / chat rooms message groups to collude during the completion of online assessments.
  • Inappropriately assisting another student with the production of an assessment task, including sharing answers or providing drafts or completed copies of an assessment task.
  • If a student makes an inequitable contribution to a group assignment and claims credit for the work of others, this is collusion and may be considered as academic misconduct.

Inappropriately using digital or information technology to complete an assessment task, i.e., using such technology without explicit permission from your module coordinator and / or not acknowledging use of such technology when its use is permitted

Examples include, but are not limited to:

  • unauthorised and / or unacknowledged use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to generate content for assessment purposes; or
  • unauthorised and / or unacknowledged use of paraphrasing or translation software to, for example, disguise plagiarism, collusion, contract cheating or other academic integrity breach.

3.3 Your Responsibilities

In this section we outline your responsibilities in relation to Academic Integrity. Our expectation is that you will:

  • Get informed
  • Ask questions if you are unsure about anything described in this document
  • Embed ethical practices in your written work

If you are unsure about what Academic Integrity is or need clarification on how to avoid plagiarism, please work through these additional very useful guides and resources:

Academic Integrity generally:

English, Drama, Film and Creative Writing specifically:

And for more information on Artificial Intelligence and Academic Work see

Please note: If after reading this document, related policies included here and after working through the resources included above, you are still unclear about academic integrity, plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct, it is your responsibility to ask a member of the teaching staff to clarify what is meant by academic misconduct before you submit your work.

3.4 How to avoid Academic Misconduct?

When you submit any work for assessment to the School of English, Drama and Film, you are bound by UCD Academic Regulations and the UCD Student Code of Conduct and you are understood to have submitted this work on the basis that it is your own work. You may be required also to declare explicitly that this is your own work. This is Academic Integrity.

The declaration may be in the form of a signed cover sheet or through a checkbox system on Brightspace.

Listing sources and referencing citations are essential, but simple steps in writing an assignment. Correct citation practices, when you list your sources and provide clear citations for quoted and paraphrased work, help you to avoid academic misconduct, such as plagiarism. 

For directions on citation practices, please use the guidelines here:

Citing Information and Avoiding Plagiarism - English, Drama, Film and Creative Writing - LibGuides at UCD Library.

Core academic integrity training is now available to all UCD students through a short self-paced online course.  The course ensures that you have the opportunity to receive information and guidance on ensuring the integrity of their work and avoiding plagiarism.  Upon successful completion of the course you are issued with a digital certificate.  Some modules in the School of EDF ask you to complete this course as part of the module requirements. It is recommended for all students taking English, Drama, Film and Creative modules. You will find the link to the course here: Academic Integrity - Referencing, Citation & Avoiding Plagiarism here

For further information, UCD Library provides education about, and promotes University policy on, academic integrity and has a repository of resources on plagiarism and how to avoid it (Library Guide to Academic Integrity).

3.5 Directive against Self-Plagiarism

In all major individual pieces of written assessment presented for a module in English, Drama, Film or Creative Writing, you may not repeat material that you have already submitted for assessment as a substantial component of that or any other module on the undergraduate BA. In other words, you cannot re-present or re-submit what is effectively the same argument on the same material (even if it is re-written in slightly different words), such that it is obvious that credit is being sought twice or being sought for the same substantial piece of work. This is called self-plagiarism, and it not permitted. 

By ‘substantial’, the School means a single piece of written work that is worth more than 20% of the final module grade; this does not usually include short writing exercises, texts of in-class presentations, etc., which count towards a Continuous Assessment grade.

3.6 Directive on the Use of Generative Artificial AI

Content generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies must not be presented as your own work. Where an assignment in a module is marked with a red traffic light (Coded Red), you must not use Generative AI tools in any part of the assessment process. AI-generated content is often factually inaccurate, out-of-date, and includes false or fabricated sources/citations. If you include factually inaccurate material and/or fabricated citations in your assessments, you may be marked down for false or inaccurate content, which may result in fail grades. In addition, some content generated by AI tools makes use of authors’ ideas without referencing them, which is a form of plagiarism. If you submit AI-generated content that includes unreferenced material you will be in breach of the UCD Academic Integrity Policy.

In some modules you may be invited to generate and/or engage critically with content generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies as part of your assessment. (Coded Amber or Green in the traffic light system used in the School). This engagement will always be done in line with the UCD Academic Integrity Policy and MLA style citation guidelines for generative AI. You will receive clear guidelines from your module coordinator about what is or is not permissible. It is your responsibility to follow those guidelines.

3.7 Specific Examples of Plagiarism and Appropriate Citation Practice

In this section we give you some examples of Plagiarism and what is not Plagiarism:

In preparing an essay on Irish Drama, you might note the following quotation and publication information:

Even before the political violence erupted in Northern Ireland in 1969, Friel’s plays centered on an attachment to the local, to the small community, to the marginalised and border regions as opposed to the metropolitan center; it is one of the important ways in which he has come to be recognised as a postcolonial writer. His plays dramatise the poetics of the tribe, and they do so most often through an obsessive focus on its microcosm, the family.  (Anthony Roche, The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel, Cambridge UP, 2006, p. 2)

Plagiarism is evident if you argue as follows:

EXAMPLE 1:

Friel’s plays are centered on an attachment to the local.

There is no source listed here so this is plagiarised because you have quoted from Anthony Roche’s essay but you have not acknowledged it.

EXAMPLE 2:

It is fair to say that even before the political violence erupted in Northern Ireland, Friel’s plays centred on an attachment to the local and to the marginalised and border regions more than the cities. In many ways Friel is interested in tribes and families.

This is plagiarized. Even though you have deleted some the quotation and added some of your own words, you have not acknowledged your use of Anthony Roche’s work.

EXAMPLE 3:

Anthony Roche argues: “It is fair to say that even before the political violence erupted in Northern Ireland in 1969, Friel’s plays centered on an attachment to the local” (2). In this context, it is evident that Friel was a writer committed to issues of family and tribe, to the rural more than the urban, to borders more than centres.

In this example, some of the quotations is cited correctly. However, in the second sentence, ideas are clearly drawn from Anthony Roche’s essay without listing the source of these ideas. So this too is plagiarised.

EXAMPLE 4:

Anthony Roche argues: “It is fair to say that even before the political violence erupted in Northern Ireland in 1969, Friel’s plays centered on an attachment to the local” (2). This is an important point in reading Friel. His plays consistently address small-town Ireland. Roche extends this reading by emphasising the importance of the “tribe” and the “family” (2). Representations of the family will be the focus of my study.

This is not plagiarized because you have given clear evidence of your use of Anthony Roche’s essay (the number ‘2’ listed twice, indicates the relevant page from his book). Your work is completed in this case when you add the publication details to your “Works Cited” section as follows: 

Roche, Anthony. “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel. Cambridge UP,

            2006, pp. 1-17.

 

EXAMPLE 5:

As my essay examines the role of women in Brian Friel’s work, Anthony Roche’s analysis of the plays is an important one for my argument. In general terms, he emphasises that the local and the family are obsessively featured in Friel’s work (Roche, 2). I seek to investigate that obsessive interest, but with a focus on the women in the families.

This is not plagiarized because you have paraphrased Anthony Roche’s work, but you have given clear evidence of your use of his essay as the source of your information, even though you have not used quotation marks (the number ‘2’ indicates the relevant page from his book). Your work is completed in this case when you add the full publication details in your works cited as follows: 

Roche, Anthony. “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel. Cambridge UP,

            2006, pp.1-17.

3.8 Electronic Detection

Electronic submission of major assessments on Brightspace is mandatory for all modules. All assessments submitted electronically will be checked by the University originality checker software.

Submission of an electronic copy of major assessments using the originality checker, acts both as a deterrent against academic misconduct and an efficient way of detecting it. Students are advised to use the originality checker as a guide and to check the plagiarism score ahead of final submission of the assignment. If the score is high (more than 10%, not including rubric or bibliography), the student needs to check that all material has been referenced in accordance with the School guidelines

Paraphrasing words or phrases to avoid detection is not the solution as this is just another form of academic misconduct (see specific examples above). The electronic copy further offers a resource for Module Coordinator seeking to advise students who may be veering close to academic misconduct, as well as guiding students in relation to accurate and comprehensive referencing of sources.

4. School of English Drama and Film Student Academic Misconduct Protocol

  1. If a student is suspected of academic misconduct based on poor academic practice, the Module Coordinator (MC) will reach out to the student in the first instance if clarifications are needed to determine the nature and extent of the poor academic practice. MCs may also reach a decision on how to proceed based on evidence in the submitted work without consultation with the student.
  2. If the MC identifies poor academic practice (based on sections 3.6 and 5.1 of the Student Academic Misconduct Procedure) the MC may apply appropriate penalties without further referral.
  3. If the grounds for academic misconduct are adjudged to be  more serious, more extensive and evidenced, the MC refers the case to the School’s Academic Integrity Committee with a short report (see appendix 1) outlining the grounds of suspicion, a copy of the piece of work, and any supporting evidence.
  4. Members of the Academic Integrity Committee, comprising the School’s Academic Integrity Adviser and two other members of the School’s academic staff, evaluate the case individually and decide on whether or not academic misconduct is evidenced, based on the UCD Plagiarism Tariff.

  5. If the Committee concludes  that there is evidence of academic misconduct, a meeting of the Academic Integrity Committee is then convened the committee proceeds in one of the following ways: In cases of suspected serious or repeated incidents, the case is referred without decision to the Student Discipline Procedure. The student will be advised by a member of the School committee, via the student’s UCD email address, that they will be contacted directly by Student Engagement, Conduct, Complaints and Appeals in due course .

    Alternatively, the student is informed by a member of the committee, via the student’s UCD email address, that
    • an assessment is under review as an alleged instance of academic misconduct and that the case is now being investigated by the School Academic Integrity Committee.
    • The student is also informed about sources of support, such as those provided by their Student Advisors and/or the Students’ Union.
    • The student is invited to respond to the allegation by attending a meeting convened by Academic Integrity Committee and is advised that their Student Adviser may attend if that is what they wish.

A specific timeframe will be set out for the student within which they must confirm attendance at the meeting.

6. If the student fails to respond to an email request to confirm a meeting time or fails to attend the confirmed meeting, the Committee will, within any timeframes established, proceed to consider the case.

7.The student will be informed by email of the outcome of the meeting within 5 working days.

Outcomes of a Referral to the Academic Integrity Committee

The Academic Integrity Committee may decide any of the following, in line with UCD’s Student Academic Misconduct Procedure:

  • That Academic Misconduct has not occurred. No record is kept on the Academic Misconduct Record System. The work is graded without penalty for Academic Misconduct.
  • That Academic Misconduct has occurred. The student will receive a verbal or written warning, be directed on where and how to receive advice about academic integrity (good writing, citation and referencing practices and avoiding plagiarism or other forms of academic misconduct) and the incident will be recorded in the Academic Misconduct Record System. The Committee will apply a penalty in line with the UCD Plagiarism Tariff system.
  • The Committee may also refer the case without decision under the Student Discipline Procedure.

For a map or overview of the process involved in dealing with plagiarism see: the UCD

Process Map for School Academic Misconduct Procedure

5.Useful Contacts and Resources

School Academic Integrity Adviser (2025-26): Dr Anthony McIntyre (anthony.mcintyre@ucd.ie)

School Academic Integrity Committee (2025-26)

Dr Anthony McIntyre (Chair Autumn Trimester 2025-2026)

Dr Jeanne Tiehen (Chair Spring Trimester 2025-2026)

Prof. Nicholas Daly

Resources: