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Citations As Expressions Of Fairness, Helpfulness, And Decorum, Drew Nathaniel Keane

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Much of the literature on academic integrity focuses on misconduct; there is little discussion of what constitutes ethical academic practice (Macfarlane, Zhang, Pun (2014); Blum (2009); East and Donnelly (2012)). I argue for teaching ethical use of sources in terms of three social values that are expressed in context-specific aways: fairness, helpfulness, and decorum. I interrogate a number of examples to show how each of these values is necessary to make sense out of academic citation practice. Though we know concepts of originality, textual ownership, and citation are complex and differ across contexts, media, and cultures, plagiarism is still widely …