Academic honesty

TIES542 Principles of Programming Languages, Spring 2017

For similar instructions in Finnish, see here.

Adhere to academic honesty in your studies and on this course. Always make it clear what is your own work and what you have taken from somewhere else. Cite your sources clearly and precisely, whether or not you quote them directly. If you have done something together with another student, you must mention this and give the names of all who participated in it, unless this is obvious from the situation. Usually it is also appropriate to discuss who did what.

Consequences and penalties for dishonesty

If your course submissions have been deliberately dishonest and the teacher becomes aware of this, you will not pass the course. Even the appearance of deliberate dishonesty will delay your passing the course, as the issue is investigated. Further, unintentional but apparent breaches of your obligations to academic honesty will need to be corrected before you can pass the course.

If the teacher seriously suspects that you have deliberately breached your obligations to academic honesty, the matter will be referred to the dean for a formal investigation. Possible penalties are caution, warning, and suspension from the university for up to a year.

For more detail and guidance see the code of conduct for preventing and dealing with academic fraud and plagiarism.

For academic discussion of these issues, see this article. Reading it is not necessary to understand these instructions, but it may give some background.

Source code

Taking someone else's source code and using it as a part of your own program's source code is a direct quote and must be clearly marked. There are no established conventions for doing so, however. I recommend marking it clearly using comments.

Cite sources for any nontrivial algorithms and nontrivial coding tricks you use and did not invent yourself (unless they are well known; stuff taught in bachelor-level courses does not usually need to be cited). Give a full citation in comments or accompanying text (such as README).

Direct quotes in text

When you use someone else's words verbatim or almost verbatim (almost the same words in almost the same order), you are quoting them directly. Even a translation is considered direct quoting.

It is usually a better idea to use your own words (that is, to paraphrase), but direct quoting is sometimes appropriate, for example if the precise words used by your source are important.

Every direct quote must be marked in such a way that the reader will understand that you are quoting someone directly. The most common method is using quotation marks. It is also common to display the quote in its own paragraph, which is indented and separated from the surrounding text by whitespace, but even there using quotation marks is best for clarity.

A proper citation of the source is mandatory in every direct quote, but a citation alone is not enough. You must indicate direct quoting separately.

If you have modified the quote in any way, you must make a mark of the modifications:

If you replace words with other words, put the new words in square brackets.
Otherwise, replace words you have deleted with an ellipsis (...; in Finnish it it is more common to use double en dash like this: – –). It may be a good idea to put the ellipsis in square brackets.
If you add words in the middle of a quotation, put the additios in square brackets.
If there is boldface, italics, or other visual emphasis in either the original or in your quote, this needs a comment. The comment is usually attached to the citation. For example: (Kaijanaho 2015, p. 152, emphasis added); other possible phrases to use include "emphasis deleted" and "emphasis in the original".
If your quote is your own translation of a source that is in a different language than you are using, indicate this in the citation with a phrase like "my translation".

Some examples:

unmodified direct quote: "Even at this date, computing was not the sole domain of women. It was really the job of the dispossessed, the opportunity granted to those who lacked the financial or societal standing to pursue a scientific career." (Grier 2005, p. 276)
modified direct quote: "Even at this date, [the profession of] computing was not the sole domain of women." (Grier 2005, p. 276)
modified direct quote: "Even at this date, computing [...] was really the job of [...] those who lacked the financial or societal standing to pursue a scientific career." (Grier 2005, p. 276)

The citations refer to the following item in the bibliography: David Alan Grier: When Computers Were Human. Princeton University Press, 2005.

Never give a false impression of the source when quoting. If the reader checks your source, they should not find anything surprising about your quote.

Direct quoting of figures and tables

Using someone else's figures or tables, even if you redraw them yourself or make minor modifications to the table's layout, is direct quoting. You must make this clear and also cite the source.

Citations and bibliography

A clear and precise citation is one that allows the reader to figure out without trouble what source you are citing and where to go look for it (you are, however, entitled to assume that the reader knows how to use the library). The bibliographical details of each source must be given either in the citation or in a separate bibliography.

Note that a citation must be precise. It is almost never appropriate to cite Google or Wikipedia generically. Citing a particular Wikipedia page is sometimes appropriate, if no better source is easily available.

You must give the following details of every source in either the citation or in an accompanying bibliography:

author
title
year or publication

in the form they are given in the source itself.

You must also give the publication data depending on the type of the source:

for an academic journal article, the name of the journal, the volume, the issue, and either the beginning and ending page numbers or the article's ordinal number
for a published book, publisher and their home city (if several cities are listed, use the one listed first) as well as the name and number of the series if any (particularly for Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science)
for an article published in a book, the details of the book as well as the beginning and ending page numbers
for a thesis not published as a book, the name of the institution and the type of the thesis
for a conference paper or abstract not published in a book or in a journal, the name of the conference

in the form they are given in the source (or in the publication containing the source) itself.

If the source is accessible online (whether freely or through a paywall), add one of the following:

the URI and the date of access (the date when you last checked the link)
DOI (digital object identifier)

It is usually preferable to use a DOI if one is available. Otherwise, try to find a permanent link, that is, a link that the publisher intends to remain stable for years. If there is a link identifying the precise version of your source (which will lead to that same version even if the source is updated later), you should use that one.

If some piece of information needed for the citation or bibliography (such as the name of the author) is not available, do not invent one yourself. If you consider it appropriate, you may use some other information in its place, but make this clear to the reader.

If you use a separate bibliography, write your citation in such a manner that the reader can easily figure out which item in the bibiliography you are referring to. In any case, include (if possible) in the citation itself a precise page number or other similar information regarding where in the source you are referring to.

You can find examples of appropriate citation and bibliography styles in any good master's theses, doctoral dissertations, and academic articles in the field of information technology. In this course, I do not care what format you use so long as it is clear and precise.