Guide to Plagiarism and Cyber-Plagiarism

Although plagiarism has been around as long as students have, the Internet has dramatically increased the ease of and opportunities for plagiarism. "Cyber-plagiarism" is the term used to describe the process by which students either copy ideas found on the Web without giving proper attribution, or the process by which students download research papers from the Web, in whole or in part, and submit the paper as original work. The phenomenon of cyber-plagiarism is affecting Universities around the globe.

• In a 1999 survey of American students conducted by the Center of Academic Integrity at Duke University, 68% of the 2,100 students polled said that they had committed at least one academic offence such as plagiarizing (Quan F1).
• Larry McKill, the Associate Dean of Arts, Student Programs at the University of Alberta, estimates about 70 people were proven to have plagiarized during the academic year 2000 in the Faculty of Arts (Gold F1).
• During the same year, at the University of Ottawa, 18 students in the faculty of arts and sciences were disciplined for plagiarism; Carleton University reported 50 cases of plagiarism; and at the University of Toronto over 200 cases of plagiarism are reported each year (Quan F1).
• Most university administrators believe that the number of unreported cases of plagiarism far exceeds reported numbers (Quan F1).

The purpose of this web site is to examine the issues of plagiarism and cyber-plagiarism and what faculty can do to prevent, detect, and report plagiarism.

Please email any comments or questions to: anna.bombak@ualberta.ca

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