Merrimack College's Academic Integrity Code (AIC), is a collection of policies that defines academic dishonesty, and outlines the procedures and penalties that result from violations. It is the student’s responsibility to be familiar with this policy. 

Academic dishonesty includes copying from books, articles, the Internet, other students, and the use of ChatGPT/AI without proper citation.  All sources for ideas that are not your own in papers must be cited and the use of exact words from other works should be set off in quotation marks and cited. 

What does the AIC cover?

• Cheating - "While taking a test, quiz, or examination, you must rely on your own mastery of the subject and not attempt to receive help in any way not explicitly approved by the instructor."


• Fabrication - "You must not falsify, invent, alter, or use in a deliberately misleading way any information, data, or citations in any assignment." Note: ChatGTP/AI content falls under this category.


• Complicity - "You must not help or attempt to help another student commit an act of academic dishonesty as, for example, allowing another student to cheat from your exam or assignment or helping another student on a take-home exam."


• Plagiarism - "Plagiarism is intellectual theft. At Merrimack, the failure to acknowledge the intellectual contributions of others is considered plagiarism."


• Appropriation - "You must acknowledge the original source when using or incorporating an existing work into the production of a new work for a variety of purposes such as creating parody, offering commentary, or extending meaning and/or expression through a new context for the original work."


• Multiple Submissions of the same work - "You must not submit academic work for a class which has been done for another class unless your instructor gives prior approval."


• Unsanctioned Collaboration -  "When doing out-of-class projects or assignments, you must work individually unless collaboration has been expressly encouraged or permitted by your instructor"

Plagiarism is intellectual theft. At Merrimack, the failure to acknowledge the intellectual contributions of others is considered plagiarism. It is important to avoid even unintentional plagiarism by being familiar with accepted ways to acknowledge sources and by developing good note-taking and research habits. -Merrimack College's AIC 

Turnitin.com's "The Plagiarism Spectrum" explains common forms of plagiarism into easy-to-remember terms and definitions: