Regulations for Doctoral Studies and Study Regulations

VII.9. Good academic practice


VII.9. Good academic practice

140. Participants in teaching and studies follow the good academic practice, serving as a model to each other by their honest and fair behaviour. If a student notices an incident of academic fraud, the good practice is to inform the university of it.

141. Improper behaviour is academic fraud, a serious violation of generally accepted rules of behaviour or academic code of conduct, forgery of documents and an intentionally committed criminal offence while a student.

142. Academic fraud is

142.1. in an assessment of learning outcomes, the use of any materials that the teaching staff member has not explicitly permitted the students to use;

142.2. requesting and using unauthorised assistance, for example, prompting, copying others’ work, using other student’s help during individual assessment; 142.3. sharing of knowledge, which is not permitted by teaching staff;

142.4. participating in the assessment of another student, unless it is allowed;

142.5. presenting the work of another person under your name or deliberate use of parts of it without proper academic referencing;

142.6. submission of the one’s own work again in the same or another course, unless the teaching staff has allowed it.

143. To process suspected cases of academic fraud and improper behaviour, by the directive of the head of the respective unit, standing committees of at least five members are formed at each faculty or, by the decision of the dean, each institute. The committee may comprise academic employees and programme directors of the respective unit and must include at least one student of the respective unit. The procedure of the work of the committee(s) is established by the faculty council.

144. A teaching staff member who has discovered academic fraud in a course must give a warning to the student in case of violation, or in case of a more serious violation, make a proposal to the committee to process the case. The student has the right to submit an explanation within five working days and request processing the case by the committee. The members of the committee dealing with cases of academic fraud and other relevant employees of the university have the right to see the warning and the student’s explanation. The warnings are deleted when two years have passed.

145. If the person who discovers a student’s improper behaviour, including a suspected case of academic fraud, is not a member of the teaching staff teaching the course, the person must notify the committee of the case in a format that can be reproduced in writing.

146. The committee informs the student of the proceeding, provides an overview of the circumstances known to the committee and asks the student to present an explanation about the case.

147. If academic fraud or other improper behaviour is ascertained, the committee proposes

147.1. the teaching staff member to warn the student, or

147.2. the vice dean for academic affairs to reprimand the student, or

147.3. the vice dean for academic affairs to make a proposal to the vice rector for academic affairs to exmatriculate the student.

148. The proposal must include a justification, based on what circumstances and evidence the committee established the fraud and on what grounds the committee decided to make the proposal. Based on the proposal of the committee, the vice dean for academic affairs issues a written reprimand to the student or makes a proposal to the vice rector for academic affairs to exmatriculate the student. If the vice dean for academic affairs disagrees with the position of the committee, the case may be directed back to the committee for further investigation.

149. If the student has committed academic fraud and is reprimanded or the exmatriculation process has been started, the grade F, or “fail” in the case of pass/fail evaluation, is entered in the report for the respective course, and in this case, the student has no right to a resit in this course. In the case of a warning, the teaching staff member may give a negative grade for the course or lower the grade.