Evaluation of an intervention to help students avoid unintentional plagiarism by improving their authorial identity

Students with poorly developed authorial identity may be at risk of unintentional plagiarism. An instructional intervention designed specifically to improve authorial identity was delivered to 364 psychology students at three post‐1992 universities in London, UK, and evaluated with before‐and‐after measures of beliefs and attitudes about academic authorship, using the Student Authorship Questionnaire. Changes in questionnaire scores showed that the intervention led to significantly increased confidence in writing, understanding of authorship, knowledge to avoid plagiarism, and top‐down approaches to writing, and significantly decreased bottom‐up and pragmatic approaches to writing. For understanding of authorship, knowledge to avoid plagiarism and pragmatic approaches to writing, significant intervention by year of study interaction effects showed that the greatest improvements were among year one undergraduates. Direct evaluative feedback showed that 86% of students believed the intervention helped them avoid plagiarism and 66% believed it helped them write better assignments. Post‐intervention focus groups revealed changed student understandings about authorial identity and academic writing. The results show that interventions can help students avoid unintentional plagiarism by adopting more authorial roles in their academic writing. Further research could explore other influences on authorial identity, and examine the impact of authorial identity interventions on other outcome indicators.     

数字图书馆视域下学术论文图像篡改造假检测研究

[目的/意义]论文查重和查新功能是数字图书馆提供的信息服务之一,对学术界健康发展起到重要的作用。然而目前国内各高校图书馆的检测系统大多针对文字进行检测,而图像方面的检测鉴别存在很大的局限性,致使论文中对图像篡改的学术造假日益增多。因此,研究图像造假检测具有重大的意义。[方法/过程]针对这一问题,本文提出了一种能够鉴别论文中图像造假行为的模型,对图像数据检测平台框架进行设计。[结果/结论]通过实验证实了该模型的可行性与有效性,能够为数字图书馆图像篡改检测提供借鉴,提升信息服务质量,具有一定的理论价值。     

美国大学防剽窃教育的主要特点及其启示

剽窃是世界各国学界存在的一个共同问题.剽窃行为的整治是一项系统工程,需要政府、社会、学界、大学和学人们的共同努力.美国学界虽然也存在着剽窃问题,但一般能够做到有效控制.所以如此,一个重要原因是得益于美国大学普遍重视防剽窃教育.本文介绍、分析了美国大学防剽窃教育的主要特点及其给我国大学进行类似教育所提供的一些启示.     

由文章抄袭引发的思考——从期刊编辑工作的角度

结合稿件的审阅从编辑工作的角度对论文抄袭现象进行探究,为避免此类现象再次出现,提出从三个方面进行防范：第一,提升编辑的学术专业素质和法律素质。第二,继续完善审稿制度,运用网络技术保证稿件质量,如数据库查询,建立专家库网,运用反剽窃软件,构建编辑间的信息共享体系等;第三,加强编辑与作者交流,构建诚信平台,完善用稿合同。     

Turnaround time and market capacity in contract cheating

Contract cheating is the process whereby students auction off the opportunity for others to complete assignments for them. It is an apparently widespread yet under-researched problem. One suggested strategy to prevent contract cheating is to shorten the turnaround time between the release of assignment details and the submission date, thus making it difficult for students to make arrangements with contractors. Here, we outline some characteristics of the current market for contract cheating and demonstrate that short turnaround times are unlikely to prevent contract cheating because requested turnaround times for university-level assignments completed via contract cheating are already short (average 5?days). In addition, for every contractor awarded a job, there are an average of 10 others offering to complete it within the specified time suggesting that there is abundant excess capacity in the market.     

Taking Political Autonomy Seriously: a reply to Ian Gregory

This paper raises some questions about academic authorial honesty under the headings of Plagiarism (including self‐plagiarism), Theft, and Collusion. Compared with the medical sciences, the social sciences in general and education specifically, lag behind in terms of critical attention being paid to the problem of plagiarism, the peer review process and academic authorial ethics. The ubiquity of the Internet, the ever intensifying demand to publish or perish, and maybe, a general shift in perceptions of what constitutes ‘bad’ plagiarism and collusion which challenge traditional notions of what constitutes authorial honesty, mean that the time may be ripe for a consideration by academic writers and journal editors of how they regard and deal with the whole area. This paper makes an early contribution to the discussion.     

Maintaining academic integrity among East African university students

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine the extent to which academic integrity is maintained in the academic programmes of three East African university students selected from one of the universities in each one of the three countries. For confidentiality and identification purposes, the universities were labeled A, B and C. The level of academic integrity was interpreted on the basis of the extent to which participants admitted to have engaged in plagiarism and academic misconduct in its various manifestations. The findings clearly indicated that academic dishonesty is widely practised by East African university students. The extent to which this held true varied from one item to another of the sixteen questionnaire statements with the highest score being in items related to plagiarism. Overall, 37% of the students in university C, followed by 32% of students in university A and 24% of students in university B engaged in academic dishonesty. The rate at which academic dishonesty was reported was comparable to what has been reported in other countries including Canada, Ethiopia, South Africa, the UK and USA.     

“Unskilled Laborers”

Advancement of knowledge and progress in technology drives the need for protecting inventions, new ideas, writings, music, and other media. While abundant, intellectual property and copyright issues are not simple, and the United States has adopted multiple rules via treaties worldwide. Academia has been fortunate with regard to the freedom provided by the fair use doctrine. Despite the freedoms, however, some feel that liberty is now limited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) and other rules being placed on intellectual property use (Carlson 2004).     

Deconstructing Plagiarism: International Students and Textual Borrowing Practices

This article reviews studies from various disciplines on plagiarism as a cross-cultural issue and examines cultural, educational, and linguistic factors that may influence the textual borrowing practices of international students. The reasons international students may employ inappropriate source use are complex and attempts to address and combat plagiarism in higher education must take into account multiple factors. Recommendations are made for ways in which academic libraries can assist international students with understanding plagiarism through orientations, instruction, reference service, and web-based guides and tutorials.     

‘Thou shalt not plagiarise’: from self-reported views to recognition and avoidance of plagiarism

Throughout much of the literature on plagiarism in higher education, there is an implicit assumption that students who understand plagiarism, who have high ethical views and declare not to engage in plagiaristic behaviour are able to recognise it and avoid it in practice. Challenging this supposition, this paper contrasts students’ self-reported data with their ability to recognise and avoid plagiarism in a proposed case scenario. A questionnaire was adapted from previous literature and administered to a sample of undergraduate first- and second-year students in an Irish university. Results show that self-reported measures are not a powerful predictor of the students’ ability to recognise the practical case as an academic breach, nor to avoid the breach through referencing. This suggests that students’ understanding and awareness of academic breaches would benefit from experiential learning and that higher education institutions should not merely rely on providing statements and definitions of academic misconduct. Also, the results highlight the potential unsuitability of using self-reported measures to study plagiarism, despite their widespread use.