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Research Support@HKU Libraries

The HKU Libraries provides support in different stages of your research cycle.

Ethical Considerations

1. Research Integrity

A website prepared by HKU Research Services to get more information on Research Integrity.

2. Write and cite sources   

Credit or cite properly is the essence of academic integrity.  Endnote offers the CWYW feature for you to Cite While You Write.  It also helps build and format the reference list according to your chosen citation style.  To learn how to use it, enroll in the ILT02 eLearning@HKUL: Manage Citation with Endnote or refer to the Endnote@HKU LibGuide.

3. Avoid plagiarism     

A website prepared by HKU Teaching and Learning and provides pertinent information to avoid plagiarism.

Join the online course ILT01 Information Literacy Training: Academic Honesty to learn:

  1. What is plagiarism
  2. Why need to cite
  3. When to cite
  4. How to cite properly
  5. Citation styles
  6. Citation tools available to you
  7. What is Turnitin

Also, take a look at the following book for more information on plagiarism.

Plagiarism: A guide for research postgraduate students at The University of Hong Kong.

(Jordan, S. R., & University of Hong Kong. (2014)).

4. General Similarity Check   

Turnitin offers Similarity Checking on students' work for proper citation or potential plagiarism. Once a paper is submitted to Turnitin, it will compare with documents in a continuously updated database consisting of current and archived web pages, millions of student papers worldwide, and collections of newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, e-Books, and e-Texts.  Find out more from Turnitin@HKU.

HKU research students are required to submit their theses to Turnitin for similarity check before submitting the theses for examination.  For more details, please refer to the Workflow of Compulsory Plagiarism Check on RPg Theses.

5. Copyright in Teaching and Learning at HKU     

Visit the Copyright in Teaching and Learning at HKU website to explore the pertinent information and acquaint yourself with the related legislation, guidelines, and policies when using print or non-print resources arranged by the Libraries.

Watch videos at the Copyright Classroom –HKU to learn more about copyright on Learning, Teaching, Research and Presentation, and more.

6. Ethical Use of Library Resources & Services      

When the Libraries subscribes to e-resources for the HKU community, the conditions of use are set out in the license agreements negotiated between the Libraries and the publishers/vendors. It is the responsibility of individual users to comply with these terms & conditions of use.

Systematic downloading/copying of an "excessive" portion of a resource either manually or by using robots, spiders, or other automated programs, and archiving the downloaded content in any format or medium is strictly prohibited. Check out the guidelines for downloading from databases and copying of copyrighted materials.  

To get more information about using the library resources and services responsibly and ethically, visit our policy and guidelines page.