Academic integrity

1. Where the line sits

Legitimate. Reading someone else’s summary to understand a topic. Comparing your notes against theirs. Practising with their questions. Looking at a graded essay to understand what a strong argument looks like. This is what studying with other people has always involved.

Misconduct. Submitting any part of a purchased document as your own assessed work. Copying an essay, changing the wording, and handing it in. Using a document during a closed assessment where materials are not permitted.

The difference is not what you read. It is what you submit with your name on it.

2. Why we host essays at all

Essays are the most misused category on any notes platform, and we thought seriously about not hosting them. We do, with conditions, because a student who has never seen a distinction-graded essay is being assessed partly on access rather than on ability.

The conditions:

• Essay listings carry a visible notice that they are reference material, not for submission.
• Marker feedback is encouraged, because the feedback is the part that teaches.
• Sellers must confirm the work is their own and was genuinely submitted and graded.

If evidence shows a listing exists mainly to be submitted, we remove it.

3. What we remove

• Anything advertised as ready to submit, or offering to complete an assessment.
• Contract cheating in any form — writing to order, sitting an assessment for someone else, or brokering either.
• Live exam papers, take-home assessment questions still in circulation, or anything under embargo.
• Institutional material the uploader did not create. See the upload guidelines.
• Solutions to assessed coursework that is currently open for submission.

4. Your institution's rules still apply

Policies vary. Some institutions restrict sharing course material more tightly than copyright law does; some prohibit any use of third-party notes for particular assessments. Those rules apply to you regardless of what is permitted here.

Check your programme handbook or academic integrity policy if you are unsure. If they conflict with anything on this page, follow your institution.

5. Working with universities

We would rather hear from academic staff than from lawyers. If you teach or administer a programme and something on CramShare concerns you:

• Report a specific listing through contact and we will review it within one working day.
• Ask us to pre-emptively block a course code during an assessment window, and we will.
• Request removal of institutional material through the takedown process.

We will not remove students’ own original notes simply because an institution would prefer they were not shared. Where we decline, we will say so and explain why.

6. Consequences on CramShare

Accounts found to be facilitating misconduct — advertising submission-ready work, brokering contract cheating, or uploading live assessment material — are suspended, and earnings from the affected listings are withheld. This applies to buyers and sellers alike. Where an institution asks us to confirm activity as part of a misconduct investigation, we respond to properly made requests.

7. Honest advice

The students who get the most out of this platform read a summary before the lecture, then write their own version afterwards. That is not us being pious about it — it is simply what the reviews say. Documents are a shortcut through the reading, not through the learning, and every assessment is eventually designed to tell the difference.