Plagiarism awareness

Plagiarism on is not an uncommon practice. Students who are asked to submit a short writing or a presentation draft sometimes copy, to varying degrees, texts from the Internet. When questioned about their actions, students are not always aware that plagiarism is poor academic practice nor of the proper methods of quoting or referencing sources. This paper first reviews background literature in order to understand how plagiarism is defined, to attempt to grasp to what extent it happens, and to know what kind of policies are in place at the university level. Then, the results of a study of student attitudes towards plagiarism in Japan are discussed. Students (N=81) and educators (N=4) at two universities, one private university and one national university, completed a survey about the topic. Analysis questions were answered through a survey with items such as: “Is there a clear policy against plagiarism?”, “Are students informed and aware about the policy?”, “Are there courses dedicated to instructing students on citation?”, etc. The current survey results indicate that 1. Both students and educators are concerned about plagiarism and feel the need for policies, and 2. Both students and educators misperceive the current policies.