the adoption of good academic habits that meet agreed academic conventions and thereby avoid the various forms of academic misconduct. (Moon 2005)
Good academic habits
Knowledge is built up by combining, rejecting, integrating and adapting the ideas of others. (Moon 2005) Using information in this way is a key part of learning and necessary in order to succeed at university. Your skills in using knowledge in this way will become more sophisticated as you progress through your course.
Agreed academic conventions
By becoming a university student, you’ve joined an academic community which – like many communities – has conventions and rules that everyone must follow (Moon 2005). The convention of academic honesty is that new ideas are treated like property that someone owns. If you use someone else’s ideas without acknowledging them, you’re effectively stealing.