Plagiarism in Higher Education: Tackling Tough Topics in Academic Integrity

Book excerpt: Plagiarism is a complex issue that affects many stakeholders in higher education, but it isn't always well understood. This text provides an in-depth, evidence-based understanding of plagiarism with the goal of engaging campus communities in informed conversations about proactive approaches to plagiarism. Offering practical suggestions for addressing plagiarism campus-wide, this book tackles such messy topics as self-plagiarism, plagiarism among international students, essay mills, and contract cheating. It also answers such tough questions as: Why do students plagiarize, and why don't faculty always report it? Why are plagiarism cases so hard to manage? What if researchers themselves plagiarize? How can we design better learning assessments to prevent plagiarism? When should we choose human detection versus text-matching software? This nonjudgmental book focuses on academic integrity from a teaching and learning perspective, offering comprehensive insights into various aspects of plagiarism with a particular lens on higher education to benefit the entire campus community.