Research Integrity in my Thesis

The University’s Ethics & Integrity website has useful information, practical advice, and resources about expectations of researchers. The principles and responsibilities that all researchers must adhere to are set out in the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct for Research, 2018 (Code). The Code also sets out institutional responsibilities.

When there is concern that a researcher, including a graduate researcher, may have breached the Code, a complaint may be made under the University’s Research Integrity and Misconduct Policy. While the University aims to take an educative approach for mistakes and unintentional breaches of the Policy and the Code, the consequences of being found to have intentionally breached the Policy and the Code can be severe.

View the University's Statement on research integrity and digital assistance tools.

For advice on using digital assistance tools in your research, please refer to our Graduate Researchers and Digital Assistance Tools page.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is potentially a serious breach of research integrity. All researchers need to understand what it is and how to avoid it.

Inclusion of text, illustrations, or ideas that are not your own in a research publication or thesis without acknowledging them appropriately is plagiarism. Researchers are expected to properly acknowledge the source of all material that is not original. This applies to all written documents, interpretations, computer software, designs, music, sounds, images, photographs, and intellectual property that were created by someone else.

One of the most common forms of plagiarism involves failing to appropriately acknowledge the source or ownership of material, including copying directly from other sources, not providing citations for quotations, and inadequate paraphrasing. Even unacknowledged copying of a single sentence is of concern.

iThenticate

You are strongly encouraged to use iThenticate to check the originality of your writing early on and throughout your studies. The use of iThenticate in preparation for confirmation and prior to thesis submission is now mandatory. We also particularly encourage the use of iThenticate before submitting any articles for publication or conferences. You can submit a substantial piece of writing (a thesis, a section of a chapter, or the written progress report) to obtain an iThenticate Similarity Report compared against a database of published research literature and discuss this report with your supervisors.

Please go to iThenticate at the University of Melbourne for more information.