Academic misconduct

One of my essays has been flagged for academic misconduct. It says on my essay improper citations. Am I going to be penalised for this? I haven’t plagiarised any of it. I think it’s more that I haven’t referenced properly. It’s my final year so I’m worried.

It will depend on the severity of the misconduct, if you have failed to reference sources to pass of content as your own then this is very serious, if you have simply made a minor error on one or two minor sources accidentally then i can’t imagine the repercussions will be severe. The variation in what this could be is very wide, first thing you should do is gather evidence, understand the issue, and if you’re confused seek clarification & consult the student union.

I’ve spoken to the school of English about it and they’ve said that some of them get penalised (10 marks) and some of them just have no repercussions if it was an accident, in this case it was. The mistake that I made was improper citations I think, meaning that it wasn’t an attempt to play off work as my own, I was just a bit sloppy in my referencing, meaning the marker was confused. All the works I used are in the bibliography.

Most universities have a range of further repercussions including capping the assessment at 40%, failing the assignment, mandating academic integrity courses etc.
Minus 10marks (or even 10%) is a pretty light repercussion so if this is what they suggested then it does sound like you’re in the neighbourhood of a fairly minor infraction. Learn the problem and don’t let it happen again. You do get some academics who are very lenient to accidentally & innocuous mistakes but others are tighter & follow all of your institutions regulations.

It says on the university website that academic misconduct that takes the form of poor academic practice is not subject to penalisation (I.e. mistakes in referencing).