A quarter of UK students are guilty of plagiarism, survey shows

The problem of plagiarism among university students in the United Kingdom, including those in medicine, came under the spotlight at a conference last week organised by the UK Plagiarism Advisory Service.

According to a survey published by the Freshminds recruitment consultancy to coincide with the conference, as many as one in four university students may have cheated by copying material for essays from the internet.

The online survey was sent out last month to 600 recent graduates from all disciplines and 1000 officials of the National Union of Students. A total of 363 people responded. The survey included 10 returns from students who had done a health related degree, but most replies were from arts students.

It showed that 16% of respondents had plagiarised work more than once and that a further 9% had plagiarised once. The detection rate among those who had plagiarised was 3%. Nearly a quarter (24%) of respondents had not been advised by their academic institution on what constituted plagiarism.

The survey defined plagiarism as “inserting sections of text from any outside source into your own work, whether they are left whole, or amended to conceal their origins.”

Commenting on plagiarism among medical students, Professor Tony Weetman, dean of the medical school at Sheffield University and chairman of the Council of Heads of Medical Schools, said breach of the rules—if discovered—could lead to disciplinary action. “It's a serious matter, which we would give rise in extreme cases to referral for review by the student review committee,” he said.

“If a student is trying to gain an advantage by plagiarising a piece of work and passing it off as their own, that's as serious as looking over someone's shoulder and copying their answers in an exam.

“I take the view that 99% of medical students are decent, honest, upright people,” said Professor Weetman. “Supervisors are aware of the potential [for plagiarism], but the university provides guidance about ways to pick it up.

“Sometimes the style of an essay suddenly changes. They start to use phrases that are not correct, or they may have gone to an American website and it may be an American spelling. There will be telltale signs like that.”

Most medical schools did now offer guidance to students and tutors on plagiarism, he said.

Harvey Marcovitch, vice chairman of the Committee on Publication Ethics, which monitors medical publication ethics, said: “There is a thin line between what is reasonable quotation and what is plagiarism. It has to do with openness. If it isn't made explicit, it should be.”

The Plagiarism Advisory Service was set up two years ago by the Joint Information Systems Committee, a body funded by the higher education councils to advise on the use of information technology in education.

More information on the Plagiarism Advisory Service is at the Joint Information Systems Committee's website (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/). The survey results are available at http://www.freshminds.co.uk/