Academic Misconduct

What happens if you are contacted by lse about possible academic misconduct?

Generally the department will contact you via email explaining their concern and proposing some next steps. Remember, at this stage, the department will be seeking a conversation with you to determine what may have occurred. You will have the opportunity to respond either via an email or a face-to-face meeting (online or in-person). Please contact us if you would like support with this.

If, after your response, the department determines that an Academic Misconduct offence has occurred, they will email you with a decision. You can either accept this penalty or appeal it via an Academic Misconduct Panel.

Outcomes

Possible outcomes could include a dismissal of the case, formal warning, re-mark the work with the plagiarised material removed, a zero mark for the paper or more severe sanctions.

Plagiarism

An important thing to be aware of is that accidental plagiarism is still plagiarism. The school will look solely at the words on the page when making these determinations. Your circumstances will be taken into account when deciding on a penalty however.

Full information on the process can be found here. 

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What can you do?

There are a few ways that you can prepare for both the allegation email/meeting or Academic Misconduct Panel. You will usually be asked what you understand about plagiarism or academic integrity as well as being asked how you usually take notes and reference. You may also be asked about the content of the work to ensure that you have an understanding of it. It would be a good idea to familiarise yourself with your work to make sure you can answer these questions, it might be a while since you last looked at the work!

In the case of suspected use of AI, we understand that this may be difficult to work through. Please contact us if you have further questions about this (su.advice@lse.ac.uk). 

If at any stage you would like some support, please do reach out to our advisers in the Advice Service.

If you would like to speak to someone about referencing to ensure that you are doing things correctly, we would suggest contacting LSE Life as they provide workshops and one-on-one study sessions covering a range of study skills.

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What can we do?

Our advisers can attend departmental or panel meeting with you as a silent attendee. We can also provide you advice and guidance on the process itself along with answering any questions you may have about the procedure.

Please note, unfortunately we are not able to predict the outcome of an Academic Misconduct investigation at any stage. Our role is to assist you through the process and provide you with the best advice possible for your particular case.

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