Academic Plagiarism From The Perspective Of Students

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Academic plagiarism from the perspective of students
Reyes J1
, Coronel S2
, Flores R1
, Díaz R1
., Ortiz L.1
1
Health Sciences Department. 2
Agriculture and Animal Production Department.
Division of Biological and Health Sciences.
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Xochimilco, México.
Abstract
Plagiarism is a matter of great interest and concern in academia. Sadly, there are few
reports on plagiarism in Mexico. The educational model of our institution is called
“Modular System” and is a model focused on problem solving-based learning.
Therefore, since the first course, students must devote a lot of to development of
research and reporting it. In this way, in some cases, plagiarism is a phenomenon that
could occupy special significance.
The objectives of this work were: (1) to assess the frequency of various activities or
practices considered academically inadequate during the development of research
papers in a sample of first year students of the degrees offered by the Division of
Biological and Health Sciences of our University, (2) to compare the frequency of
inadequate academic practices of students which were observed in other Spanish-
speaking institutions, and (3) to propose strategies for promoting the implementation of
good academic practices in the preparation of their reports and tasks.
The questionnaire was answered by 180 voluntarily freshmen from Biology, Nutrition,
Dentistry, Agriculture, Nursing, Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine. They answered a
number of questions about the frequency of performing various dishonest practices in
the preparation of academic papers. The results were compared with those obtained in
a survey conducted in Spain (540 students). Absolute and relative frequencies were
estimated.
Frequency of some practices, according to the study, indicates the need to include
training activities for teachers that promote improvement in academic competence and
honesty of students.
Keywords: Academic plagiarism, good practices, students’ perception, project-based
method, research sources, plagiarism antidotes.

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Introduction
In 1973 our university was created, due to social pressure by the growing demand of
young people to access higher education and the need for an institution of higher
education that would meet the needs of national social reality. It has five campuses
spread across the city, each with a different teaching methodology. Our educational
model raised a substantive change to all elements of the university practice, forming a
triad of research - teaching - service and so we implement a model of project-based
learning, called Modular System. It is an educational institution that seeks to redefine the
education system, where major problems of society are studied and professionals are
formed to solve more pressing social problems. Rather than teaching all traditional
contents of one discipline, in this teaching and learning model a domain of professional
practice (i.e. a social problem) is identified and the students receive the (theoretical and
technical) training to analyze it and to propose solutions. One of the premises of the
Modular System is that reality cannot be apprehended from a single-discipline view, and
tries its analysis through an interdisciplinary perspective.
In this model, students conduct research each course. Some timer they feel under
pressure for delivery times and reporting tasks, which are conducive to inappropriate
practices, including academic dishonesty, mainly cyber plagiarism. Faced with this
problem, we have proposed to the university authorities, the need for a comprehensive
program to combat plagiarism and believe that the first step is to know the student's
perception about the problems of dishonest academic practices. A first approach
allowed us to see that part of the problem of academic plagiarism among students, is
the ignorance with regard what is it and what its consequences are. A second stage is
about to begin, as in spreading the results of the actual project; we have initiated training
courses for teachers, aimed at promoting good practices to avoid plagiarism.
The great technological progresses of the last decades have had a direct impact on
development of many transferable skills of students. However, at the same time they
have taken advantage of use of technology in the classroom, they have also obtained
negative and unsatisfactory results due to influence of these new technologies in
teaching-learning process. According to Bowman (2004), more than three quarters of
the student population have plagiarized part or all tasks at least once during college,
with information copied from the Internet. Although other studies point to a lesser extent,
the practice is so widespread that Comas, Sureda and Urbina (2005) have suggested
this as a “copy and paste generation". Other authors place the percentage of students
who have plagiarized between 40 and 50 percent (Hansen, 2003: 776-777).
Our students have grown up in an environment with multiple media, which increasingly
often be displayed without altering information that comes from other sources, which is
not explicitly cited. That is precisely what has happened with many websites and the
blogosphere itself; in fact, the company Google has recently implemented a system of

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algorithms to discriminate those pages that are dedicated to compiling information from
other pages without adding own content (known as “content farms”), but this applies
only in the United States starting from the February 24, 2011 [Document available in
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html]
However, with the current situation of generalized impunity, some institutions have taken
public activities of punishment, as in the cases of plagiarism lawsuit of university
research papers (from thesis to projects of varying scale). A study in England by CFL
Software Development company, showed that five percent of those who applied for the
prestigious universities of Oxford and Cambridge (about 50,000 people) have
plagiarized fragments and even personal anecdotes that are on the Internet, which was
described in 2007 by the news channel BBC [Document available at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6426945.stm]
Also Hansen (2003:773) states that there are two main causes that lead students to
engage in plagiarism. The first is the belief that they will not be discovered; the second is
due to bad influence of the social context, "in today’s ethical climate they consider
plagiarism trivial compared to well-publicized instances of political and corporate
dishonesty". Among the often-mentioned factors that determine the increase on
plagiarism is the ease with which you can access content that will become part of a work
to a particular subject. Comas and Sureda (2007) list, based on the proposed Dordoy
(2002), four causes that drive plagiarism in universities:
- Trying to get better grades and academic performance.
- Laziness and poor time management dedicated to the study and development of
work.
- Ease and convenience of access to the material via Internet.
- Lack of basic rules to follow academic work rules.
Dordoy’s classification (2002), from the University of Northumbria, reflects that
plagiarism has become an international phenomenon, in spite characteristics of
student’s origins, traditions and diverse educational systems.
Types of plagiarism
The website of the University of Oxford devotes a special section to plagiarism
<http://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/goodpractice/about/#d.en.62958>, it provides a
comprehensive typology of plagiarism among students. In the website one of the
suggestion is that students need to cite is not limited exclusively to printed texts but also
other media, whether visual or oral. Similarly, a text published or not, has the right to be
recognized. Even classes and materials used in them, but also their own and others
work, need their corresponding citation.

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Tripathi and Kumar (2009) have developed a classification of the types of
comprehensive plagiarism describing seventeen types of plagiarism, grouped into three
main blocks that encompass practices without citing sources, with sources cited (but still
plagiarized) and a section that includes various practices.
TYPES OF PLAGIARISM
Sources not cited 1.1 The Ghost Writer
Presenting someone else's work as your own.
1.2 The Photocopy
Complete fragments are reproduced without alteration.
1.3 The Potluck Paper
Different sources are combined without any reference.
1.4 The Poor Disguise
The writer altered the paper’s appearance and certain words are changed.
1.5 The Labor of Laziness
Reformulation of different sources that make up the final work.
1.6 The Self- Stealer
The writer “borrows” own previous work, violating the requirements of originality.
Sources cited (but
still plagiarized)
2.1 The Forgotten Footnote
The writer quotes the author, but without the information needed to locate the
source. This practice tends to hide other forms of plagiarism
2.2 Misinformed
Unable to locate the sources cited because of its incorrect reference
2.3 The Too -Perfect Paraphrase
The writer quotes the author, but not the exact words in quotation marks, so he or
she pretends to own an original interpretation.
2.4 The Resourceful Citer
Citations and references are correct, but practically constitute the bulk of the
article.
2.5 The Perfect Crime
In some fragments are cited correctly in other sources but a paraphrase from
those sources is introduced, this time without explicit recognition
Other types of
plagiarism
3.1 Copy and Paste Plagiarism
Direct quotations are reproduced without quotes.
3.2 Word Switch Plagiarism
Changes of some words quoted, reproduced without quotation marks.
3.3 Metaphor Plagiarism
Use creative language of an author without stating the due recognition.
3.4 Idea Plagiarism
Pass a creative idea or suggests a solution to a problem as his own.
3.5 Reasoning Style / Organization Plagiarism
Following the reasoning of another author in the approximate order that develops
in this article.
3.6 Data plagiarism
Plagiarism data from other studies.
Adapted from Richa Tripathi y S. Kumar (2009)

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Plagiarism in Latin America and Spain
In Mexico, as in other Latin American countries and Spain, the plagiarism in universities
is a fact that is enshrined in codes of ethics and rules of some institutions, but which in
fact is not punished. Sometimes teachers awarded it on a bad note, but rarely find other
university practices that include mechanisms to eradicate this widespread reality.
In our countries, activities to eradicate plagiarism are mere punitive notices; however, is
a mistake to describe plagiarism only as a misdemeanour or as a matter of academic
formality. Instead, plagiarism is a serious lack of academic honesty. It is a principle of
intellectual honesty that all members of the scientific and professional communities
acknowledge their debt to the original authors of ideas, contents and data that form the
basis of the work and research they present. To publish or present the work of others as
their own, not only shows a lack of companionship and respect, but also means a failure
in the learning process.
While some teachers say “many high school students don’t understand – or never
thought – about copyright regulations and how to properly cite sources” (Hanssen,
2003), we believe that the development of transferable skills that allow students to value
the moral importance of honest academic practices produces a better relationship
between all participants in the teaching-learning process. According to Morato (2012),
many students choose their research topic once found numerous entries in a search
Internet engine where you enter keywords. In some serious cases, students deliver
documents found on websites at free of charge. Instead of using this particular method,
students need to learn to think about the process that they must pass before embarking
on the drafting and revision of this work.
Nevertheless, if preventive measures cannot guarantee that this practice is eradicated,
the detection has shown itself today to be more than effective to identify those texts that
cover fraudulent practices. The practice of introducing into the Google search engine
segments capable of being the object of plagiarism is still widespread among teachers.
However, with the current software is not even necessary to perform the task of
selecting fragments. Plagiarism identification software is freely distributed in universities
of UK. The best known are CopyCatch Gold, Turnitin and Eve2; although Tripathi and
Kumar (2009) listed fourteen different detection modes, ranging from the best known
practices to more complex programs.
Start applying solutions
Just a few years ago, computers had not yet become indispensable tools for the
development of academic material. Today, any text processor combined with access to
the Internet allows us to quickly and efficiently distribute presentations and materials.
However, the references tend to disappear from the materials developed by teachers

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and students. While in the past, precisely because of the reduced availability of books
and the absence of Internet, we saw the need to indicate the origin of the texts that we
used in class. Nowadays are abundant cases in which the references are not cited,
incomplete or improperly cited or even mentioned in the text and not to the end of the
printed job.
As a result, students are not familiar with the system of citations and bibliography.
Except for matters mainly related to documentation and literature, which addresses
directly the different reference systems, students often shows a remarkable lack of
knowledge about citation systems. So it is advisable to provide general indications to
students for carrying out any work. In early stages it is not necessary to introduce one of
the manuals with different cases or the complete ISO 690-2 for example; a model with
the two most common systems can be the first step:
Last Name (s) Name. Title. City: Publisher, year. [MLA]
Last Name (s), Initial (s) (year). Title, Publisher: City. [Harvard-APA]
We have begun to provide training for teachers and students, using scaffolding
postulated by McKenzie (1998) and their antidotes to detect and avoid plagiarism, as
well as encourage the development of concept maps and presentations from schemes
posed by the teacher and effective activities that avoid the temptation to use copied
texts from the Internet. With this additional activity, sharing this interesting work of
synthesis, students can develop oral skills too. Once they have benefited from these two
stages, students are prepared to write their work from their own approaches and results.
Methodology
Participants
180 freshmen completed the questionnaire. They were student from Biology, Nutrition,
Dentistry, Agriculture, Nursing, Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine (67% female, 33%
male). They were asked a number of questions about the frequency of performing
various academic malpractices in the preparation of academic papers. For comparison,
we used a survey with 540 Spanish students (56.3 % female, 43.7% male), who
responded to a similar survey conducted in 2007 through the Universia Portal (Comas
and Sureda, 2008).
Assessment Instruments
Participating students completed a questionnaire with items concerning the frequency of
performing various academic malpractices in the preparation of academic work, adapted
from Sureda and Comas (2008): a) practices of academic plagiarism using previously

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developed work and already delivered (3 questions), b) purchase of academic papers (1
question), c) academic plagiarism using printed sources (1 question), d) cyber
plagiarism (3 questions), e) distortion of consulted literature for completion of an
academic paper (1 question) and f) falsification of data and results in academic papers
(1 question). For each question there were five answer choices: never, 1 or 2 times, 3 or
4 times, between 5 to 10 times and in more than 10 times. Finally they were asked if
they knew any rule or style to cite and reference documents and whether they
considered that they had been explained in the past how to cite properly to perform
academic work.
Procedure
Students completed the questionnaire in their classroom on a previously scheduled
meeting with the teacher. All first-year undergraduate bachelor's degrees mentioned
previously during autumn quarter 2013 and winter 2014 participated. Prior to the
administration of the questionnaire, the coordinator of the project offered a lecture to the
students on the subject of plagiarism, definitions, appropriate quotation, the use of
paraphrasing, and preventive measures raised by McKenzie (1998).
Results
a) Academic plagiarism using previously developed and delivered reports:
About 30% of students surveyed reported having delivered a paper done by themselves,
which had already been submitted in previous years (to the same or another subject). A
similar percentage (27.2%) reported the survey Universia (see Table 1).
Table 1. Academic plagiarism using previously developed and delivered papers
Deliver a report
already delivered.
Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5 to 10 times + 10 times
Students
surveyed
70.4% 16.4% 5.8% 4.3% 3.1%
Universia Portal 73.2% 20.4% 4.7% 1.2% 0.9%
In relation to a similar practice, that is, delivering a work produced or written by another
student who had already been given in previous years (to the same or another subject),
almost a third of students surveyed (31.8%) claims to have engaged in this practice (see
table 2); in similar levels of the students surveyed through Universia (almost 30%).

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Table 2. Academic plagiarism using a previously developed and delivering report
by other students.
Delivering a report
of another student
already given in
previous courses.
Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-10 times + 10 times
Students surveyed 68.2% 22.0% 6.8% 0.9% 2.1%
Similarly, about a third of respondents acknowledged having elaborated a document for
another person (either off course or other), compared with 25% of those from Universia
(see table 3).
Table 3. Perform a document to another person.
Create a document
to another person.
b) Purchase of academic papers.
Buying academic papers (e.g. via the Internet) does not seem to be a very common
practice among the surveyed students (see Table 4). Thus, only three of the 180
participating students claim to have paid someone, or bought a paper; this low
percentage is also displayed in the sample of Universia students (4%).
Table 4. Paying someone to do an academic paper or buy it.
Buy or paying for a
paper.
c) Academic Plagiarism using printed sources.
Approximately 84% of students surveyed admit to having copied pieces of printed
sources without citing to produce documents, compared with 50.8% of students
surveyed through the Universia Portal (see Table 5).

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Table 5. Copy imprinted fragments and use them without citing sources.
Copy printed without
citing sources.
1-2 times 3-4 times 5-10 times + 10 times
d) Cyber plagiarism
We found that 9 out of 10 respondents claimed to have copied contents from Web
pages and pasted text fragments without quoting to make a document of an academic
subject. This high rate contrasts with the 63.2% of students surveyed through the
Universia Portal (see Table 6).
Table 6. Copy of Web pages and paste text fragments.
To copy fragments
from Web pages
Regarding cyber plagiarism Internet downloading documents and delivers it as a course
paper; we found that 34.3% state taken this action compared with 9.2% of the sample of
students Universia (see Table 7).
Table 7. Download an entire document from the Internet and deliver it, unchanged,
as the work of a subject.
Download from the
Internet an entire
document.
68.3% of respondents answered to have composed entirely a paper from fragments
copied from Web pages and/or Internet articles at least on occasion. This percentage
was lower by almost half (36.1%) among respondents in the Universia Portal (see Table
8).

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Table 8. Compose work entirely from fragments copied from Web pages and / or
Internet articles.
To compose an entirely
work from fragments of
Web pages or Internet.
e) Distortion of the literature consulted for the completion of an academic text.
The practice of listing in the bibliography a document that have not been consulted is
recognized by 45 % of students surveyed (see Table 9). This was slightly higher
between respondents of the Universia portal (54.2 %).
Table 9. Distorting the literature for conducting academic work.
Insert not
consulted
literature.
Students
surveyed
55.0% 23.4% 13.5% 7.2% 0.9%
f) Distortion of data and results in academic papers.
Approximately one out three respondents claimed to have falsified data in academic
works on occasion, while almost 30% of respondents to Universia survey have made
this practice on one or more occasions (see Table 10).
Table 10. Falsify data and results in an academic paper.
Distort data in
academic papers.
g) A high percentage of Mexican students (56% plus 12.6% who did not answer this
question) and those participated in Universia survey (64.8%) recognized do not know
the rules to quote or reference documents. Likewise, 22.5% of participant said they
never taught them to make academic work in high school (almost 28% did not answer

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this question). Of the respondents through the Portal Universia the proportion of
students who acknowledged having received no training on how to conduct academic
work amounted to 42.4%.
Discussion
The abundance of information freely available on the Internet has led to what might be
called a paradox of originality. Sometimes the desire to be original leads some students
to hide their original sources for fear of exposing themselves has no ideas. The result is
precisely the opposite, not only because in most cases plagiarism is detected but
because the author's moral rights are violated; he/she is the one who has the power to
decide where, how, and whether, in any case, if he wants his work is disclosed and must
always be linked to his authorship. Rouet (2006:78) noted that "establish a multiple
document representation is an intrinsic part of the speech made” in academic texts.
Poor education in the subject of copyright leads to confusion and some concern among
the students, so that young people often choose the wrong path, not only for ease but
poor planning of research tasks. Ana Kunz, a professor at the University of Buenos
Aires, noted that “We are concerned that the students realize that what is on the Internet
is global knowledge which belongs to everyone. So we put much emphasis on this topic"
(Premat, 2009). For all this it will be convenient to work managing this knowledge so that
the students learn to respect a set of universal rules that will be useful to them when
they undertake any academic task.
Digital literacy includes skills that were already part in the management of paper
documents in the past, but currently not all users of documents in the Internet possess
these skills. The filtering of information, discrimination from unreliable sources and
systems of quotations and references are, more than ever, necessary skills to be
developed in higher education. That plagiarism is a widespread practice reveals, first, a
high degree of passivity and naivety of a large group of students; however, on the other
hand, shows that there are significant gaps in knowledge management that teachers
should tackle.
Conclusion
The main objective of this study was to evaluate the frequency of academic malpractices
in the preparation of academic works in a sample of freshmen in our university
compared with the frequency found in the study by Sureda and Comas (2008) of a
national sample of student users of the Universia Portal.
The most common dishonest practices found among our students is cyber plagiarism,
specially the practice of copying text fragments of web pages and paste them without

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citing. This "copy and paste" activity is also one of the most common among
respondents in Sureda’s study. However, in our sample the frequency reaches 90%
compared with 63.2% of students surveyed through the Universia Portal. Secondly
between activities of academic dishonesty we found plagiarize by using printed sources
without citing them. These figures are a challenge for educational institutions since this
is a generalized practice that can be difficult to identify. How could teachers detect and
penalize this kind of dishonest conduct that most of their students are doing? How
students could recognise this conduct as dishonest when most of their peers do it?
The frequencies of other dishonest practices are very similar in both samples
(plagiarism using previously delivered papers or buying academic papers). Moreover, in
both samples there were high percentages of students who admit their lack of training
on how to conduct academic work in general and, more specifically, the basic rules of
citation.
The third objective of our work was to propose strategies to promote the implementation
of best practices in academia, including the development of research and reporting
skills. Given the results obtained, including on the explicit recognition by students of lack
of reference standards or the proper way to do academic work, the first strategy should
consist of training for teachers to improvement academic competence and honesty of
students.
References
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