Plagiarism, a widespread contemporary problem

• Author: Daniela Sorea
• Position: Transilvania University of Brasov
• Pages: 353-364

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşo v

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 12(61) No. 2 – 2019

https://doi.org/10.31926/but.ssl.2019.12.61.2.18

PLAGIARISM, A WIDESPREAD CONTEMPORARY

PROBLEM

Daniela SOREA1

Abstract: Student plagiarism has been a well-known issue for the academic

world over the last years. This study highlights the way that this issue is

addressed in the literature of the last two decades: the extent of the

phenomenon; the different perspectives on it; the solutions identified; and

the relation between student plagiarism and the Internet. The study also

contains a few remarks regarding these approaches and signals a possible

supplementary cause for the propensity of students for plagiarism, namely

encouraging pupils in pre-academic education to draw up school projects

using information available online.

Key words: plagiarism, Internet, academic ethics.

1. Introduction

Student plagiarism represents an issue that most of the members of the teaching staff

in higher education have to cope with in the 21st Century. I have directly noticed a

growing number of plagiarized papers submitted by students over the past years. What

started as an isolated phenomenon, has soon transformed into a current approach to

my didactical requirements.

This has become an increasingly bothersome and baffling situation and has led me to

wonder about its underlying causes and the means to efficiently manage it. The first

possible answers I identified focused on my own particular situation: the content of the

lectures did not appeal to the students, the formulation of the tasks for the essays was

not clear and accurate enough, the students undervalued the examiner’s skills to detect

plagiarism, the topics suggested for coverage were not interesting, etc. It was only later,

in 2013, during some informal conversations with academics from Great Britain and the

Balkan countries in a Tempus project that it dawned on me that the problem was shared

by all of us and hence the answers could be common.

In the context of this problem’s recalibration, I considered it necessary to first look

into the approaches to plagiarism in the academic journals in the last two decades.

1 Transilvania University of Braşov, sorea.daniela@unitbv.ro.