The Slippery Business of Plagiarism; Inside Higher Ed, 5/24/16

Elena Denisova-Schmidt, Inside Higher Ed; The Slippery Business of Plagiarism:

"Plagiarism is a widespread problem around the world. It can take various forms — copying and pasting text without acknowledging its source, “recycling” or self-plagiarism (presenting the same paper several times as original), purchasing papers from an agency or a ghostwriter and submitting them as one’s own. With the benefit of new technologies, cheating is booming, such that some countries are describing a ‘plagiarism epidemic’.[1] In the United Kingdom, for example, almost 50,000 university students were caught cheating from 2012 to 2015. This is only the reported cases — how many more cases remain undetected?

Students, especially those who come from corrupt environments where plagiarism is prevalent but ignored or seen as a trivial offense, need better guidance about the consequences of violating the rules of academic integrity...

Some famous politicians have been implicated in plagiarism scandals."