Online University Students’ Perceptions on the Awareness of, Reasons for, and Solutions to Plagiarism in Higher Education: The Development of the AS&P Model to Combat Plagiarism

Academic plagiarism has remained a major concern for higher education institutions, as it hampers not only the quality of the teaching-learning process and research, but also the overall educational institution. This issue appears to be even more serious in online and distance education institutions. As a result, a qualitative study was conducted on an online university in Pakistan to investigate the determinants of academic plagiarism and to find ways to address this issue. The students were given an open-ended questionnaire to reflect their opinions on the awareness and understanding of plagiarism, its determinants, and ways to address it. The findings revealed that most of the 267 online university students had a poor awareness and understanding of plagiarism. Major reasons for students’ plagiarism turned out to be a lack of a proactive approach to create awareness, an omission of citation conventions from course content, untrained teachers, a lack of strict penalties and their proper implementation, poor time management, a fear of failure, a lack of confidence, laziness, and a culture of plagiarism. The study proposes the Awareness, Support, and Prevention model (AS&P model) to address this issue in higher education institutions.

Ethics of scientific communication as a means of respect for readers

The ethics of scientific communication from the point of view of compliance with legal and moral norms, social responsibility and respect for the reader is analyzed. Forms of academic plagiarism are considered. One of the forms of hidden plagiarism - translation plagiarism - is described in detail. Attention is paid to methods of recognition of plagiarism in translation.

Areas of reforming the statutory regulation of academic integrity in Ukraine

Academic integrity is the most important requirement for scientific research. However, the legal regulation of relations ensuring the academic integrity in scientific and educational activities is fragmented and does not contain effective mechanisms for influencing the violator of academic integrity. This necessitates a doctrinal study of the category “academic plagiarism” and the development of areas for reforming the current legislation in this field. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyse the statutory regulation of academic integrity as a phenomenon, the concept of academic plagiarism, its differences from plagiarism in the context of copyright compliance, to identify the scope of subjects responsible for establishing the facts of violations of academic integrity and their powers in the field of responding to corresponding violations, procedures for bringing to justice in case of violation of academic integrity. The present study, based both on general (historical, comparative, logical, and system) and special (structural-functional, formal legal, sociological, statistical, etc.) methods analyses the prospects of statutory regulation of the relatively new concept in Ukraine, which is academic plagiarism, including the legislative norms concerning the establishment of the concept of academic integrity, types of violations of academic integrity, procedures for considering issues of possible violations of academic integrity, types of responsibility for violations of academic integrity and bodies that have the right to apply them, verifies their compliance with international standards. The paper analyses the practice of the National Agency for Quality Assurance of Higher Education of Ukraine both on the consideration of complaints about violations of academic integrity, and within the framework of accreditation of educational programmes. Attention is drawn to the contradictions of current legal provisions in the legislation of Ukraine in the field of academic integrity. Proposals to the current legislation are formulated to optimise the legal regulation of the issue of compliance with academic integrity. The authors express their opinion on the necessity of accumulating legal regulation of academic integrity within the framework of a single law “On Academic Integrity” to define higher education institutions and scientific institutions as the main subject of ensuring compliance with the principles of academic integrity, and the National Agency for Quality Assurance of Higher Education – mainly by the appellate instance regarding decisions of higher education institutions on violations of academic integrity; adjusting the list of violations of academic integrity and specifying the procedure for their establishment and stimulating higher education institutions to real and not formal compliance with the principles of academic integrity

A Plagiarism Schematic

A review of "Disguised Academic Plagiarism: A Typology and Case Studies for Researchers and Editors" by M.V. Dougherty.

THE ANTI-PLAGIARISM EVALUATION IN THE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY: PRIMARY RESULTS IN TERMS OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

Introduction. Anti-plagiarism evaluation is an integral component of the system of educational and scientific activities in particular and higher education in general. Modern areas for combating academic plagiarism include programmatic verification, optimizing the evaluation by implementing new algorithms, applying online and desktop software based on academic integrity strategies. This is why the process of technical verification of scientific papers requires significant time and physical resources. Aim. To optimize measures used to eliminate academic plagiarism based on the analysis of initial results and the experience of anti-plagiarism evaluation in terms of the implementation of academic integrity principles. Material and methods. The Code of Academic Ethics of Lviv National Medical University (LNMU) determines basic concepts and the task of academic integrity, regulates basic principles of organization and control. According to the Law of Ukraine “On Higher Education” and applicable orders, university standards and regulations, LNMU Scientific Department conducted an expert assessment and plagiarism evaluation of 5992 scientific and methodological papers submitted for 3 years. The evaluation of all scientific papers in terms of academic integrity is carried out considering the percentage of uniqueness and results of direct semantic analysis. The comparative pedagogical analysis of primary results was also conducted. Results. Unichek, Plagiarism Detector Pro, Viper, Antiplagiarism.NET, etc. and free Advego Plagiatus software is used at the university based on the shingle method for plagiarism detection. Links to software and services for initial verification of scientific papers for plagiarism are included in the LNMU methodological guidelines to provide technical support of scientific and educational work assessment. In 954 small and medium length scientific papers (15.92% of the total sample), violations of scientific communication were found: copying, signs of the conflict of interest. 778 (12.98%) of abstracts and articles were finally rejected (as a result of refusal to revise and negative results of the repeated evaluation. Conclusions. Primary results of anti-plagiarism evaluation cause concerns in terms of their academic integrity: higher incidence of self-plagiarism and replications of scientific research results in articles and abstracts of young scientists. It is crucial to comprehensively and fully review documents determining plagiarism prevention and establishing responsibility for academic plagiarism, specifying the procedure for considering appeals

Preservice Teachers’ Perception of Plagiarism: A Case from a College of Education

Few studies examine plagiarism in a Middle Eastern context, specifically from the perspectives of preservice teachers. As future gatekeepers of academic integrity, preservice teachers need to understand plagiarism. This study surveyed 128 female preservice teachers in one university in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The survey explores preservice teachers regarding their understandings and reasons for academic plagiarism and their responses to particular scenarios. Findings indicate that preservice teachers have a thorough comprehension of plagiarism and suggest a lack of knowledge of citing sources, weak writing skills, a lack of time, and not knowing the research process as reasons for plagiarism. Informants' responses to six scenarios are presented to illustrate their perspectives further. Discussion addresses language and cultural issues to contextualize the study.

Reflexiones sobre el plagio académico

Esta investigación centra la expresión del “plagio académico” concebida como un factor que afecta a los derechos de los autores e impacta de forma negativa a nivel académico y profesional. Es una investigación de corte cualitativo, donde se analizan y describen a detalle las desventajas de este concepto a través de la técnica de revisión bibliográfica. Los resultados obtenidos demuestran que, el plagio es un obstáculo en el proceso formativo de los estudiantes que limita la capacidad crítica, con causantes principales como el déficit de conocimiento en redacción académica, falta de ética, carencia de sistemas anti-plagio en las instituciones. El plagio es una práctica deshonesta que limita la capacidad de pensamiento crítico, creatividad y ética, tanto en el ámbito académico como en el profesional. El auge de la tecnología ha sido un aliciente para acrecentar las estadísticas de plagio, sin embargo, esto no es un contratiempo reciente, puesto que desde la antigüedad se ha llevado a cabo este tipo de práctica desleal y antiética. Palabras clave: plagio académico, proceso formativo, ética, transgresión de derechos, ejercicio profesional. ABSTRACT This research focuses on the expression of "academic plagiarism" conceived as a factor affecting authors' rights and negatively impacts academically and professionally. It is a qualitative investigation, where the disadvantages of this concept are analyzed and described in detail through the technique of bibliographic review. The results showed that plagiarism is an obstacle in the student process that limits critical ability, with major causes such as the knowledge deficit in academic writing, lack of ethics, and lack of anti-plagiarism systems in institutions. Plagiarism is a dishonest practice that limits critical thinking creativity and ethics, both academically and professionally. The rise of technology has been an incentive to increase plagiarism statistics, however, this is not a recent setback, because this kind of unfair and unethical practice has been carried out since ancient times. Keywords: academic plagiarism, formative process, ethics, transgression of rights, professional exercise.