At HBS, collaboration and conversations are at the core of the academic experience. We all benefit immeasurably from the insights of our peers and from an abundance of resources that support our learning. In this section, we discuss how you can use all this information in your own work while ensuring you are giving appropriate credit to others for their ideas and words. The information is meant to supplement the MBA Honor Code and offer you the resources to cite properly and avoid plagiarism. Still in doubt after reading the paragraphs below? Feel free to reach out to your faculty or members of the MBA staff. We are glad to help.

You are responsible for learning the proper forms of citation. Rules for various categories of citations can be found in the Baker Library Citation Guide, including:

• Quotations. When using the words of someone else, the words must be placed within quotation marks and cited fully, including the page number(s) on which the quoted words appear in the original text.
• Paraphrasing. All paraphrased material must be acknowledged. Whenever ideas or facts are derived from a student's reading and research or from a student's own writings, the sources must be indicated.

If you have any doubts about the preparation of academic work, you should consult your instructor before the work is prepared or submitted.

Consistent with Harvard University policy, it is a violation of academic honesty, the MBA Honor Code and HBS Community Values Statement to present work developed by others as your own (including ideas and analyses, either written or spoken in class). You must acknowledge the source of any substantive ideas or analyses that you obtain from others. For example, if the source of a particular idea or analysis is a discussion group, you should acknowledge the group when presenting the information.

Harvard University's Plagiarism Policy

The two paragraphs below are reprinted in large part from the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Handbook for Students:

All homework assignments, projects, lab reports, papers, computer programs, and examinations submitted to a course are expected to be the student's own work. Students should always take great care to distinguish their own ideas and knowledge from information derived from sources. Failing to do so is plagiarism. The term "sources" includes not only published primary and secondary material, but also information and opinions gained directly from others, including fellow students, editors, advisors, and tutors.

The amount of collaboration with others that is permitted in the completion of assignments can vary, depending upon the policy set by the instructor. Students must assume that collaboration in the completion of assignments is prohibited unless explicitly permitted by the instructor. Students must acknowledge any collaboration and its extent in all submitted work.

Plagiarism is defined as any of the following:

• The use of words or ideas of another with no credit to the original source.
• Paraphrasing or restating the ideas of another without acknowledgment.
• Presenting data or facts that have been borrowed without full citation to the original source. Fraud—a more serious offense—involves the presentation of fabricated data or facts.
• Using a unique term or concept that one has read, without acknowledging its author or source.
• Using the ideas of other students without giving proper credit. These ideas include those obtained through discussion groups, notes, the electronic transfer of notes, and the work of students who have participated in previous class discussions. While verbal plagiarism is more difficult to detect and enforce, the same standards and principles of credit and attribution apply.
• Copying a computer program from another student or any other source, or deriving a program substantially from the work of another, without permission and acknowledgment.

It is expected that all work submitted for any HBS course has been completed solely for that course. Self-plagiarism includes the practice of submitting identical or very similar material for credit in two separate courses. While the school encourages you to continuously integrate your learning across courses, it is not acceptable to submit the same deliverable (or a very similar deliverable) to more than one course.

In some situations, it is acceptable to produce more than one distinct analysis and deliverable based on a single research effort. If you plan to prepare more than one EC paper or presentation based on a central research effort, you are required to obtain the faculty member's signature of approval in advance.

You must complete the Required EC Student Report Disclosure Form (for Disclosure of Multiple Papers/Presentations from a Single Research Base) and submit the form to all relevant faculty. A copy of this completed form must also be submitted to MBA Registrar Services for forwarding to the EC Faculty Chair.

You must also submit all final work to all faculty accepting papers or presentations based on this research.