Plagiarism Prevention Guide

Although plagiarism has been around as long as students have, the Internet has dramatically increased the ease of and opportunities for plagiarism. "Cyber-plagiarism" is the term used to describe the process by which students either copy ideas found on the Web without giving proper attribution, or the process by which students download research papers from the Web, in whole or in part, and submit the paper as original work. The phenomenon of cyber-plagiarism is affecting college and universities around the globe.

  • A study by The Center for Academic Integrity found that almost 80% of college students admit to cheating at least once.
    According to a survey by the Psychological Record 36% of undergraduates have admitted to plagiarizing written material.
  • A poll conducted by US News and World Reports found that 90% of students believe that cheaters are either never caught or have never been appropriately disciplined.
  • A study conducted by Ronald M. Aaron and Robert T. Georgia: Administrator Perceptions of Student Academic Dishonesty in Collegiate Institutions found that 257 chief student affairs officers across the country believe that colleges and universities have not addressed the cheating problem adequately.
  • A national survey published in Education Week found that 54% of students admitted to plagiarizing from the Internet; 74% of students admitted that at least once during the past school year they had engaged in "serious" cheating; and 47% of students believe their teachers sometimes choose to ignore students who are cheating.
  •  (Statistics retrieved from: http://www.plagiarism.org/)

The purpose of this web site is to examine the issues of plagiarism and cyber-plagiarism and what faculty can do to prevent, detect, and report plagiarism.

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Information on this plagiarism website used and adapted with permission from the University of Alberta Libraries Learning Services.