Student anti-plagiarism measures reap rewards

Student plagiarism might be alive and well and sprouting up in campuses around the world, but in Slovakia, at least, measures put in place in 2010 are bearing fruit.

For the past four years, all Slovak higher education institutions have been obligatory users of an 'Antiplag' programme – and since 2011 there has been open access to its Central Repository of Theses and Dissertations.

A recent European Union-funded research project, Impact of Policies for Plagiarism in Higher Education Across Europe, conducted a survey in all EU countries and found “some notable differences between the Slovak surveys and the EU average.

“Almost all Slovak students (99%) become aware of plagiarism before or during their bachelor studies.” The report added that Slovak students “were the most aware of plagiarism of all EU countries”.

It attributed this to the national repository of theses.

From 1989, rapid escalation in the number of higher education institutions and students, information and communication technologies, internet penetration and a low level of copyright and intellectual property rights awareness contributed to the growth of plagiarism among Slovakian students.

In 2008, the Ministry of Education set up a common national repository for bachelor and masters dissertations and other theses.

An amendment to the Higher Education Act of 2009 stipulates that every thesis or dissertation must be sent to the repository for an originality check. The check is made against the national repository as well as against other resources, mainly those on the internet.

From 2010 to the end of March 2013, more than 235,000 theses and dissertations underwent this process.

The impact on the academic community has been considerable and very positive.

To celebrate the achievement, the European Commission awarded the European Prize for Innovation in Public Administration to the Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information, which is managed by the ministry and which operates the Central Repository of Theses and Dissertations and the nationwide Plagiarism Detection System.

Use of both systems is compulsory by all Slovak higher education institutions.

Plagiarism attitudes elsewhere

The Slovakian results contrasted sharply with plagiarism awareness in other countries, for example Brazil. The researchers found that a review of Brazilian literature on plagiarism showed knowledge on this subject was still very rudimentary and that “efforts to combat plagiarism are practically non-existent at Brazilian universities”.

Student questionnaires produced results similar to others around the world. The reasons given for plagiarism were: lack of time, the desire to obtain good grades and difficulties with academic writing.

Although most showed a clear understanding of verbatim plagiarism, some respondents demonstrated lack of understanding about how to paraphrase.

In the German survey, when students were asked what would happen if one of them were found guilty of plagiarism in their assignment or final project or dissertation, 40% said there would be no consequences for plagiarism.

On the issue of continuing professional development for academic staff, one senior academic interviewed dismissed the idea as “ridiculous” and only 50% of teachers welcomed the idea of more training on aspects of academic integrity.

The researchers said the responses to other questions suggested that many academic staff in Germany would benefit from some form of professional development on how to handle student plagiarism and encourage good academic practice in student work.

When it came to France, “the lack of statistics at national level and few institutional statistics about quality and academic integrity in higher education made it impossible to be precise about the scale of student misconduct and plagiarism”.

According to national interviews, said the researchers, there was no quality monitoring organisation in the country for higher education and no national system for audits of quality process and systems.

“The low number of students and teachers positively identifying possible plagiarism examples suggests that students’ confidence in understanding academic writing conventions may be misplaced and that teachers may themselves be inadvertently plagiarising.

“The low number of respondents opting for ‘punishment’ reflects the emerging picture of the culture in France where it appears to be common to condone student plagiarism.”