Challenges in Addressing Plagiarism in Education

Academic integrity encompasses a number of values including honesty, trust, respect, fairness, and responsibility [1] and ideals that should be upheld by all educational stakeholders. ‘‘Academic integrity involves ensuring that in research, and in teaching and learning, both staff and students act in an honest way. They need to acknowledge the intellectual contributions of others, be open and accountable for their actions, and exhibit fairness and transparency in all aspects of scholarly endeavour’’ [2]. Academic integrity ensures public trust in the credibility of scholarship at all levels of education including the research process and its outcomes [3]. Academic integrity breaches include a diverse range of unfair practices including plagiarism, cheating in exams or assignments, inappropriate collusion, theft of other students’ work, paying a third party for assignments, downloading whole or part of assignments from the Internet, falsification of data, misrepresentation of records, or other actions that undermine the integrity of scholarship [4]. Plagiarism is one of the most vehemently derided breaches of academic integrity because it undermines the premise that scholarly work will make an original and honest contribution to an existing body of knowledge. Despite the fact that plagiarism occurs at all levels of scholarship, the main focus in the recent explosion of research in this area is on student plagiarism [5–9]. For the purpose of this paper, plagiarism is defined as the use of others’ words, ideas, or creative work without appropriate acknowledgement, and does not necessarily imply intentional deceit.