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UK leads Europe in the fight against plagiarism

   Some continental efforts to ensure integrity are ‘primitive’, study
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   integrity among students, a study has found.

   The analysis looked at factors such as universities’ use of plagiarism
   software, consistency of sanctions, transparency, training, efficacy of
   prevention policies and efforts to address the issue at a national
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   countries, in most aspects,” said Irene Glendinning, academic manager
   for student experience at Coventry University and principal
   investigator on the Impact of Policies for Plagiarism in Higher
   Education across Europe project.

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   Ms Glendinning said that unlike in the UK, where efforts to prevent and
   detect plagiarism have been growing since 2001, in Spain students
   reported that tools to detect plagiarism were rarely used, and only
   one-third said there were policies for dealing with the problem.

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   Ms Glendinning also acknowledged that the survey looked at policies and
   their implementation rather than the prevalence of plagiarism because,
   she said, such data simply did not exist. “There’s no doubt that
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   she said, such data simply did not exist. “There’s no doubt that
   there’s a lot of plagiarism around … but there are no statistics
   anywhere,” she said. Consistent recording would mean “we can have a
   handle on whether what we’re doing is actually having an effect”.
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   and Cyprus. Among suggestions for the UK will be that the Quality
   Assurance Agency should, as part of existing audits, require
   institutions to explain their plagiarism policies and demonstrate their
   effectiveness and consistency.