Ethics

Academic honesty is counted as an act of providing the detail of certain circumstances with proper reasoning and proper evidences, in such a way that the listeners believe in the truth being presented.  The circumstances should be realistic and factual.

Newton, (2001) argues that the academic honesty is also counted in terms of the biased truth but the fact remains that the truth should be realistic, factual, and believable. If an importance of academic honesty is established in the educational sectors than the dishonesties as plagiarism and cheating in exams can be avoided.

The broader questions about morality are discussed in the specific branch of philosophy that is named as ethics thereby the academic honesty or the dishonest conduct in the academic research is dealt in an association with ethics. The academic misconduct itself has been defined as a kind of cheating done against the rules of academics. There are many forms of academic misconducts and these include plagiarism, cheating, fabrication as well as professional misconduct. Cheating is one of the main forms of misconducts that need to be addressed to the academics. It is usually observed in the examination that the students more or less depend on the unethical conducts as cheating other than following the ethical standards by being honest while preparing for there examinations. Whitley, and  Keith-Spiegel, (2002) says that cheating is defined as the sharing of information between the students during an examination. As compared to the other forms of academic dishonesties, it has been seen that the students are unable to gain any academic advantages from cheating. There is a form of cheating that has been defined as altruistic and in this case a student is cheating the other student if he informs the other student about a certain assessment which is supposed to be held on the same day, in the later time periods. This kind of cheating has been deprecated.
The principles of utilitarianism can be applied in the ethics in academic honesty.

These principles refer to the fact that the moral worth of any action is always determined by the utility that the action carries in the provision of happiness and pleasure to the other people. Utilitarianism can also be called as consequentialism,by saying that the worth of an action is always determined by the outcome of an action. If the principles of utilitarianism are linked in the code of ethics being followed in the higher education than the dishonesties that are usually observed in the educations systems in these days, including plagiarism that is considered as a crime can be eliminated. Newton, (2001) argues that this is the kind of action, which if performed, can morally degrade a person by making use of the work that has been done by another person, and this act is immoral and illegal. Academic research in the higher education is to be done by referring to the other persons work rather than by taking all that has been done previously. Stopping the act of plagiarism can give relief to the other people thereby they can continue producing better research to be referred in the future. By this means, the main advantage of the application of these principles of utilitarianism is a relief and happiness for the researchers as they are aware of the rules that can prevent there work from being misused and cheated by the dishonest.

On the other hand, Whitley, and  Keith-Spiegel, (2002) says that the other main principle that is applied in the academic research is that of the fitness to practice. These are the policies that are used by the academic institutions in order to align the rules and regulations in which the studies are lesser under a burden of the studies and they practice the studies in an easier to follow manner. In these cases, the universities and the academic institutions require that there is a range of professional behaviors demonstrated by the students.  In higher education and by the research students, the implementation of these policies, the unethical measures that are observed by the stressed out students can be reduced in order to make sure that professional behaviors are demonstrated by the students according to the academic requirements in which the range of academic skills are also reflected.

Academic honesty principles are important for an improvement in a students moral actions. Nevertheless, if these principles are learnt in a correct manner than the students can learn how to use their skills in all of the academic tasks. The students and the academic professionals can also learn ways in which they can show there professional behaviors by being honest in their educational responsibilities.