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The "Copy and Paste" Generation
Ruben Comas Forgas
Jaume Sureda Negre
Santos Urbina Ramírez
VOLUME 12
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The "Copy and Paste" Generation
Plagiarism Amongst Students, a Review of Existing Literature
Ruben Comas Forgas, Balearic Islands University (UIB), Spain
Jaume Sureda Negre
Santos Urbina Ramírez
Abstract: The characteristics of the Internet and the methodology of assessment followed in the vast majority of educational
institutions has led to a problematic situation that must be addressed with the commitment of all parts implicated; I am re-
ferring to the plagiarism amongst students using the Internet. A review of the existing literature shows that is a increasing
problem in all the levels of the educational system. Research done so far on that eld comes –basically- from the "Anglo-
Saxon hemisphere" (mainly United States, the UK and Australia), as few research has been developed so far in other
countries. Research done it is based on giving answers to three main questions: a) prevalence of the phenomenon b) causes
of it c) solutions to it In this paper I examine the work developed so far in that area and I try to determine the basic research
topics and results obtained by the most relevant researchers.
Keywords: Plagiarism, Digital Literacy, Academic Dishonesty
TO DEVELOP MORE than a supercial
understanding in any eld where Information
and Communication Technologies (ICT from
now on) are involved, implies accessing a
world in constant and rapid evolution and without
any apparent borders. This is particularly true when
trying to describe the main “research lines” followed
recently in the area of cyber-plagiarism1amongst
students. There is a volume of relevant work com-
pleted during the last few years in psychology, soci-
ology, philosophy, and education. In each discipline,
researchers have tried to give an answer to 5 main
questions:
1. What is cyber-plagiarism?;
2. What kinds of cyber-plagiarism exists?;
3. How extensive is cyber-plagiarism amongst
students?;
4. What are the causes?;
5. What are the solutions?.
In this paper we present a summary of the main
answers given to those queries in recent years (pay-
ing special attention to questions 4 and 5 as we be-
lieve these are the core elements, especially in the
elds of education and psychology).
Definitions and Varieties of
Cyber-Plagiarism
Most of the surveys and research studies published
on Cyber-plagiarism point to an exponential growth
of the Internet, the day-by-day increasing ease of
access to it and the vast amount of digital content -
that it is expanding in a way that seems to have no
limits- as the main cause of plagiarism amongst stu-
dents. Plagiarism is a long standing problem in aca-
demic work but ICT has created a vastly expanded
opportunities to plagiarize, given the range of re-
sources now accessible via a desktop. There is no
doubt in afrming that the Internet has expanded the
number of sources that students can access –freely
and instantly- and that fact constitutes a “no return
revolution” in terms of educational processes in
general. However, questions arise when researchers
and commentators ask what use the students make
of that digital sources and resources.
Plagiarism in the digital era is seen in basically
the same terms as it existed in the past. The changes
lie in the way plagiarism is practiced and in the tools
(and especially the ease of access to them) used to
commit it. It seems clear too, as Paldy claims, that
plagiarism is “the problem that won’t go away”
(Paldy, 1996), indeed, many would go further and
1When we use the concept “cyber-plagiarism” we make reference, exclusively, to the use of NNTT (basically the Internet) by students to
plagiarize essays and academic works. Some authors have named it “web-napping” (Eysenbach, 2000), but we prefer to use the more ex-
tended and wider concept of cyber-plagiarism. Plagiarism is not monopolized by the “academic world” as there are many illustrative examples
of plagiarism in other areas: journalism, politics, sciences, plastic arts, literature, music, etc. (Park, 2003), but in this paper we focus on the
“university academic environment” and the students as plagiarists.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LEARNING, VOLUME 12, 2005/2006
http://www.Learning-Journal.com, ISSN 1447-9494 (print), 1447-9540 (online)
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say the problem looks as if it will become bigger
day-by-day. Many authors, especially since the
second half of the 90’s and mainly from Anglo-
Saxon contexts, have tried to give a denition of
what constitutes plagiarism2in the Internet Era (cy-
ber-plagiarism) –focusing the standard denitions
of “academic plagiarism”3- (Lipson & Reindl, 2003;
McKenzie, J, 1998; Hexham, I, 1999; Philips, M &
Horton V., 2000; Auer, N & Krupar E, 2001; Murray,
B., 2002; Oliphant, T., 2002; DonGiovanni O'Neil,
T., 2003; Ellis, L., 2003; Fawkner, M., 2004; Hart,
M. & Friesner, T., 2004; Urbina Ramírez, S., 2004
and Carroll, J., 2002).
A useful starting point would therefore seem to
be the denition of plagiarism from the Association
of American Historians
“… the misuse of the writings of another author
… included the limited borrowing, without attribu-
tion, of another’s distinctive and signicant research
ndings, hypotheses, theories … or interpretations.”
(Fialkoff, 1993)
and Gibaldi’s denition
“Using another person ideas or expressions in
your writing without acknowledging the source
…” (Gilbaldi, 1998)
We can conceptualize Cyber-plagiarism
as:
the use of NNTT –essentially the Internet- to gather
other people writings, ideas, theories, hypotheses,
ndings, etc. and present them as your own, either
deliberately or by default, by avoiding appropriate
attribution to the original author/s-.
Many authors include plagiarism as a part of a
wider phenomenon, that of ‘cheating’. (Deikhof et
al., 1999; McCabe, 2001; Argetsinger, A., 2001;
Carrol, J. & Appleton, J., 2001; Jones, R. et al., 2001;
Burke, M., 2004). The concept of plagiarism –in the
academic environment is located in relation to a
range of different behaviours (Park, 2003):
• as a consequence of academic misconduct
• as a consequence of academic dishonesty
• as a consequence of lack of academic integrity
• as a consequence or unethical behaviours
The difculties increase considerably when trying
to frame the ways in which plagiarism can be found.
There is extensive literature on this aspect (Park,
2003; Roig, 2001; Wilhoilt, 1994; Brandt, 2002;
Fawkner, M., 2004; MacCabe, 2001).
With the objective of avoiding starting a “never
ending” list of classications we have decided to
establish a simple double category that helps under-
standing the different forms of plagiarism based on
intent or motive (Park, 2003; Colon, 2001; Bugeja,
2001; University of Southern Australia, 2005; Bauer,
M., 2004), namely:
1. Intentional Plagiarism4and
2. Accidental Plagiarism5.
Cyber-plagiarizing by students can be
summarized as:
1. buying or downloading an essay, paper, etc.
from a term paper mill or essay bank6on the
Internet
2. copying a whole text –basically from a web-site
or from a le on the Internet (e.g. articles in
word or PDF format)- without any quotation
and submitting it as own
2Relevant references about plagiarism –from a general perspective- are:
•Anderson, J.: Plagiarism, Copyright violation and other thefts of intellectual property: an annotated bibliography with a lengthy intro-
duction. (Jefferson, N.C., 1998)
•Shelley, A.: Stolen language? Plagiarism in writing. (: Pearson Education Limited, 2000)
•Stearns, L.: Copy wrong: plagiarism, process, property and the law. In: Buranen, L. and Roy, E.: Perspectives on plagiarism and intel-
lectual property in a post-modern world. (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998)
3We use the concept “Academic Plagiarism” to dene the cases of plagiarism in which students are involved in their academic work
–academic misconduct-; not including under that concept the cases of plagiarism amongst lecturers, teachers, professors, etc. as has been
used by some authors (Roig, 2001).
4We nd useful the denitions of Intentional and Unintentional (accidental) Plagiarism given by Park (Park, 2003, pg. 476): “ Intentional
plagiarism is intentional if it is pre-meditated, designed to deceive and thus a deliberate act of literary theft. Whilst intentionality might
be difcult to establish or prove, there is no doubt that some plagiarism is accidental or inadvertent. Such unintentional plagiarism occurs
when a student fails to adopt (perhaps because they do not know) proper protocols for referring to academic material, including appropriate
ways of quoting, acknowledging ideas and compiling reference lists”
5“ Unintentional plagiarism can be caused by what psychologists describe as cryptomnesia or ‘hidden memory’ (Brown & Halliday,
1991; Marsh & Landau, 1995), which is ‘an intriguing type of mental illusion in which people mistakenly believe that they have produced
a new idea when in fact they have simply unwittingly retrieved an old, previously encountered idea from memory’ (Macrae et al ., 1999)”
(Park, 2003, pg. 476)
6On term paper mills we suggest the article: Groark, M et al. "Term paper mills, anti-plagiarism tools and academic integrity." Educase.
September 2001. 05 July 2005
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0153.pdf
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LEARNING, VOLUME 12
3. copying parts of text from one or more than one
sources and passing it as one’s own (collage
plagiarism)
4. translating and submitting -without quotation-
as one’s own a text (complete or parts of it) that
originally was in a different language than the
one the student uses to submit the essay or paper
5. using improper paraphrasing7
Prevalence, Profile of Students who
Plagiarize and Causes of the
Phenomenon
Much has been written over the last few years on the
theme of plagiarism by students using the Internet.
The differences in the ways, methodologies, object-
ives, disciplines, etc. followed by different studies
and authors means that it is very difcult to draw a
consistent and solid “portrait” based on the range of
different analysis and approaches. As Park afrms
(Park 2001), it is very difcult to nd comparative
data because:
studies differ in focus –some examine cheating in
general, some examine only plagiarism, some exam-
ine academic integrity, etc-.
the methodology is so diverse –some studies are
focused on self-reports by students, some studies are
focused on analysing texts (essays and papers sub-
mitted by students), some are focused on lecturers
and teachers opinions, and we would include a third
difculty when trying to compare different analysis:
the conceptualization of plagiarism used by the
author/s of the research.
Based on the principal results gathered through
the analysis of diverse studies it is clear that plagiar-
ism exists and has increased with the growth of the
Internet. If we simply focus on available data we
nd that there are studies that suggest that more than
75% of students plagiarize (having done it at least
once) while others quantify it as less than 15%.
(Hansen, 2003)
It is difcult to prole a typical student who pla-
giarizes. Some studies suggest that university stu-
dents plagiarize more than secondary schools stu-
dents (Hansen, 2003; Ercegovac, 2004) (there is no
research done with primary schools students) and
others that suggest the contrary. Most studies claim
that men plagiarize more than women, but we can
not conrm that position from the research published.
Some studies afrm that students enrolled in techno-
logical courses plagiarize more than students from
social, humanities, medicine, etc. disciplines –but
again this is speculative and non-rigorous and needs
conrmation through further research- (Hansen,
2003).
Many authors would seem to agree over the reas-
ons8why students plagiarize. A survey conducted
by Dordoy (Dordoy, 2002) about perceptions from
students and university staff showed that students
plagiarize mostly because:
1. they want to get a better grade
7Poor paraphrasing’ is described by Edlund: “Perhaps the most difcult part of the research paper process for most students is paraphrasing
sources. Instructors often say that you must write the information "in your own words." What does this mean?
In order to paraphrase a passage from a source, you have to understand it very well. You have to know what all the words mean, at least
in that particular context, and you have to know other words that have similar meanings.
Some students copy the passage and then try to substitute new words in the same sentence structure. The result has the same grammatical
structure as the original, with some of the words changed. Others will keep the same words, but reorganize the sentence structure, perhaps
re-ordering the sentences at the same time.” (Edlund, 2001)
8The University of Alberta (Canada) has, on its library department web-site, a list of causes that explain why students plagiarize (University
of Alberta, 2004):
1. Writing and Research Skills
2. Lack of research skills
3. Problems evaluating Internet sources
4. Confusion between plagiarism and paraphrasing
5. Confusion about terminology
6. Careless note-taking
7. Confusion about how to properly cite sources
8. Misunderstanding Key Concepts
9. Misconception of plagiarism
10. Misconception of intellectual property, copyright, and public domain
11. Misconception of common knowledge
12. Perception of online information as public knowledge
13. External Factors
14. Pressure from family, competition for scholarships and jobs
15. Student ethics and relationship with the University
16. The commodication of knowledge and education
17. Internal Factors
18. Poor time management and organizational skills
19. Cultural Factors
20. Culturally based attitudes towards plagiarism
RUBEN COMAS FORGAS, JAUME SUREDA NEGRE, SANTOS URBINA RAMíREZ
2. of laziness or bad time management
3. of easy access to material via the internet
4. they do not understand the rules
5. it happens unconsciously9
In trying to complete the list of causes or motiva-
tions, we would suggest that sometimes the method-
ology of work used by teachers, lecturers, professors,
etc. and the type of essays and papers asked of stu-
dents encourages plagiarism. The example of a lec-
turer who enters the classroom on the rst day of the
course and explains to his/her students that by the
end of the semester they have to present a 10.000
word paper about a theme developed during the
course, is an example of a teaching strategy that
contains an implicit invitation to be “plagiarized”.
In some cases there is another important, contrib-
utory factor identied when describing the causes
of the cyber-plagiarism. This is the “digital gap”: the
electronic distance that separates some lecturers,
professors, etc. from their students. Students from
the Balearic Islands University when asked why they
plagiarize using the Internet suggested, amongst
other reasons, that the lack of knowledge and skills
amongst their lecturers or professors was a key factor
in deciding to plagiarize and especially of being
condent that they would not get caught. Further
research in this area is needed in order to give credit
to these suggestions.
Detecting and Preventing Plagiarism
In detecting plagiarism we nd two main ways Lec-
turers approach the issue: a) professional detection
and b) technological detection. Professional detection
is based on the personal experience of the lecturer,
professor, etc. and as McLafferty and Foust point
out:
“… instructor can systematically watch for signals
that are consistent with plagiarism.” (McLafferty
and Foust, 2004)
The main way of detecting plagiarism in this case
is by trying to detect incongruence at different
levels10:
• Incongruence in the ideas, theories, hypotheses
and thoughts expressed
• Incongruence in the writing style of the text
• Incongruence in the logic and “normal develop-
ment” of the text (introduction, main theme,
conclusion)
• Incongruence between the ideas, thoughts, etc.
of the student expressed in the text and previous
papers or essays
• Incongruence in the bibliography and sources
cited
• Incongruence in the presentation formatting (i.e.
there are imbedded links, page breaks, incorrect
page numbers in the paper)
• Incongruence in the citations
The tools that instructor possesses are based on
the professional knowledge and experience and in
particular detailed knowledge of the area in which
the students are writing about, and many times in-
stinct is the key element when detecting a plagiarized
paper. However it is very difcult and time-consum-
ing to detect plagiarized papers (or hints of it) just
by reading them and identifying any incongruence.
Lately a good number of software and technolo-
gical detection tools have been developed and many
universities in the USA, the UK and Canada use
these detection tools routinely. They operate on the
basis that a problem created by the use of technology
must be open to being solved by the same techno-
logy. These programs check the content of a paper
automatically and compare it with either a database
of papers that the program has stored or with Internet
content. However, these programs can require large
volumes of storage space and require rapid search
devices. They also experience further problems when
students become aware of the use of such software,
they can use counter-measures to hide their plagiar-
ism (i.e. changing words by synonyms, translating
papers from other languages, and even by inserting
intentional errors in spelling and grammar). A further
problem is the rapid growth of the internet. It is
simply impossible to control the whole of the inform-
ation available because the Internet is increasing in
size at such velocity. As with virus detection, if stu-
dents only plagiarize from new sources of material
on the Net, they are less likely to be detected:
“It should be recognized, however, that the
software provides no magical answers. Some
is expensive; most is time-consuming. No soft-
ware seems to discriminate between quotations
which are properly cited and those which are
unacknowledged: what the software detects and
noties is duplication. So reports issued by
plagiarism software alert the user to what may
appear to be plagiarized material that is in fact
appropriately referenced. Manual checking and
9If interested, read “Plagiarism and paraphrasing criteria of college and University Professors” (Roig, 2001) –in bibliography-.
10 Many universities and colleges –specially from the USA, Canada, Australia and UK- give advices to instructors about how to detect
plagiarism. Amongst all we nd interesting the web-sites of: Univ. of Iowa State http://www.lib.iastate.edu/commons/resources/faculty-
guides/plagiarism/detect.html ; Slippery Rock Univ. http://www.sru.edu/pages/2863.asp ; Dalhousie Univ. http://plagiarism.dal.ca/fac-
ulty/detecting.html ; The Univ. of Queensland http://www.library.uq.edu.au/training/plagiarism.html ; The Univ. of Newcastle ht-
tp://www.newcastle.edu.au/discipline/sociol-anthrop/staff/kibbymarj/online/plagiarism.html .
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LEARNING, VOLUME 12
human judgment are still needed.” (Devlin,
2002)
Some authors, (Humes et al, 2003; Clough, 2003;
Cutwin, 2000) have studied the utility of the pro-
grams available and have compared them; others
have argued that, whatever the effectiveness of de-
tection software, the knowledge that they are in use
(like speed cameras on the highway) is enough to
deter many students. As McCabe says: “I have no
research evidence on this question, but would assume
that it would discourage plagiarism 11 ”.
There is another technological oriented way of
detecting plagiarism based on the use of search en-
gines (i.e. Google, Yahoo, Scirus, etc.) to check the
authenticity of the paper submitted by a student
(Holmberg, M. & McCullough, M., 2004). By select-
ing and adding a number of phrases to a Search En-
gine–of between 3 and 6 per page- from a text, we
can discover if there is a signal of plagiarism on it12.
As more and more material becomes web-based this
can be a very effective detection method, although
it is very time consuming and requires a lot of dedic-
ation.
Alongside detecting the incidence of plagiarism
cases there is also another method to ght against it:
preventing students from doing it. Much has been
written lately on the issue of prevention –especially
from universities and colleges- (Hedrich, 2004;
Fortney, 2003; Canada Academic Integrity Commit-
tee, 2004). These suggest that there are three ap-
proaches in trying to prevent students from plagiar-
izing when writing a paper or essay:
1. punitive regulation;
2. information and awareness; and
3. students’ and university/college staff training
and formation.
Punitive regulation: Many universities and col-
leges in the USA, the UK, Germany, Hong-Kong
and Australia, have developed strict rules to reduce
the incidence of cases of plagiarism –most of the
time taking the form of honour codes and academic
integrity policies that students must follow. Penalties
faced by students that are found guilty of plagiarizing
can be:
Meeting with the dean (or appointed designee).
Written reprimand.
Honour probation - This includes specica-
tion of whether or not the student placed on
probation shall be subject to suspension or to
separation upon conviction of a second Honour
offence.
Loss of academic credit.
Suspension - This suspension may be for any
period up to a maximum of three college years
and loss of credit in one or more courses en-
rolled in at the time of the violation.
Separation from the University and loss of
credit in all courses enrolled in at the time of
the violation13.
Several cases have been reported of students being
expelled for plagiarism. Perhaps the most well-
known example occurred at the University of Virgin-
ia – famous for having a tough honour code - where
48 students between April 2001 and November 2002
were excluded after discovering that they had plagi-
arized. At the same university three degrees were
revoked from students who had plagiarized and had
graduated before their cases were studied by the
Honour Committee (Hansen, 2003).
Information and awareness
Many universities, colleges and high schools are
trying to inuence students not to plagiarize through
awareness campaigns –most of the time providing
information about plagiarism, its consequences, and
the ways of avoiding it14:
• Through information hosted on the web-site of
the faculty, university, college, etc.
• Through publications as leaets, posters, etc.
• Through making clear the academic integrity
policy of the centre to all new students when
formalizing the matriculation process
• Through speeches of the instructors when
presenting the subject to students
Students’ and university/college staff
training and formation:
The third of the elements involved in preventing
plagiarism concerns training and formation at two
different levels: 1) training students about: how to
write an essay, how to cite information used in a
paper, how to look for and evaluate information
11 The words of McCabe cited are extracted from an interview appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education on July the 6th 2001 ht-
tp://chronicle.com/colloquylive/2001/07/cheat/ (accessed on July 8th 2005)
12 Although it is not a rigorous system it works to some extent. We used that methodology when analysing47 papers from an undergraduate
course in the Department of Education of the Balearic Islands University. Results showed that nearly 30% of the papers were completely
or partially plagiarized.
13 Example taken from the University of Richmond Honor Code
http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/scs/honorcode/
14 Some examples can be found at: http://sja.ucdavis.edu/avoid.htm // http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_plagiar.html //
http://coldfusion.louisville.edu/webs/a-s/writingcenter/uwc.cfm?page=plagiarism
RUBEN COMAS FORGAS, JAUME SUREDA NEGRE, SANTOS URBINA RAMíREZ
available on the Internet, etc. and 2) training Lectur-
ers in ways to detect plagiarism, methodology on the
development of the course – what kind of assess-
ments would be appropriate and to try to encourage
active and creative essays from students, etc.-.
Conclusions
In this paper we have tried to present a series of ar-
guments that explore the new phenomenon of cyber-
plagiarism by students when writing papers and es-
says. In summary these were:
• Cyber-plagiarism is based on the use of NNTT
–especially the Internet - to plagiarize.
• Recent research has tried to answer 5 main
questions: 1) what is the prevalence of cyber-
plagiarism; 2) what are the proles of students
that plagiarize; 3) what types of cyber-plagiarism
exist; 4) what motives students and causes them
to plagiarise; 5) what solutions work.
• Research and literature has increased over the
last few years and are drawn from different dis-
ciplines: education, economy, medicine, psycho-
logy, sociology, librarians and documentation,
computing, etc. Almost of the research has been
done in Anglo-Saxon contexts (, , and ), though
some comes from European countries, such as ,
and , and other examples can be found in and .
No rigorous study has been carried out yet in the
Spanish-speaking area. The rst academic refer-
ence –in the Spanish-speaking context- to cyber-
plagiarism by students is an investigation done
by Sureda and Comas in a qualitative research
programme focused on the use of ICT amongst
minors in the (Sureda & Comas, 2004). The rst
conceptual approximation –in the Spanish- to the
subject was the work of Urbina (Urbina, 2004).
• The Research that has been carried out follows
a wide spectrum of methodologies that include
both qualitative and quantitative studies. These
were based on instructors and university staff
opinions vs. based on students opinions; self-re-
ported cases vs. others based on technical tools.
Others were focused on secondary education vs.
university level student experiences. This range
of target subjects makes the comparison of results
and the extraction of trends and denitive conclu-
sions very difcult. However, we would suggest
that a rigorous interventive approach to cyber-
plagiarism must be based on what we dene as
the three realities:
• the “reality” of the students;
• the “reality” of the instructors and colleges/uni-
versity staff and
• the “reality” of the essays and papers.
Following those three realities UIB is develop-
ing a research project – as part of the Doctoral
Thesis of Ruben Comas - that will determine
how extensive cyber-plagiarism is amongst UIB
students. We will be asking why UIB students
plagiarize; the extent to which instructors are
aware of cyber-plagiarism, and making sugges-
tions as to what solutions should be implemen-
ted.
Plagiarism amongst university and college
students has increased due to the exponential
growth of the internet and NNTT.
The Internet makes the task of plagiarizing
easier.
Universities and colleges –especially from
the UK, the USA, Australia and Canada- seem
to be aware of the problem and are developing
strategies to minimize plagiarism (policies,
honour codes, regulations, sanctions to infrac-
tions, etc).
There would seem to be two main solutions
to tackling the problem of cyber-plagiarism:
detection and prevention.
Technological solutions have not proved to
be the optimal solution.
Further research is needed in order to determ-
ine the impact of cyber-plagiarism (not only at
the university and college levels but at second-
ary and primary levels of the educational sys-
tem), its causes and how to solve the problem.
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RUBEN COMAS FORGAS, JAUME SUREDA NEGRE, SANTOS URBINA RAMíREZ
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About the Authors
Mr. Ruben Comas Forgas
Balearic Islands University (UIB), Spain
Prof. Jaume Sureda Negre
Jaume Sureda is Professor at the Department of Education at the Balearic Islands University (UIB) and his areas
of interest are: Environmental Education, Distance learning and Information Literacy. Has published many
books and papers on that subjects and nowadays is the Director of the research Group "Citizenship and Education"
based at the UIB.
Santos Urbina Ramírez
Belongs also to the Balearic Islands University. Santos is a lecturer at the Department of Education at the
Balearic Islands University and his areas of interest are: information literacy, distance learning and NNTT and
education.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LEARNING, VOLUME 12
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