The complex concept of plagiarism: Undergraduate and postgraduate student perspectives

Abstract

The prevalence of plagiarism in university students’ academic writing is well documented. Its complex and multifaceted nature has made it difficult to reduce or manage. The literature reveals a lack of significant understanding of plagiarism and related concepts to be due to a poor or an absence of education, and it advocates for extensive and explicit education in what constitutes plagiarism at higher education level. In this review article we explore the literature on undergraduate and postgraduate student perspectives of plagiarism and related concepts in a global context. These perspectives are discussed under the following themes: students’ understanding of plagiarism and related literacy practices such as referencing, the reasons contributing to why students plagiarise intentionally or unintentionally, students’ understandings and views of the seriousness of plagiarism and students’ views on how to curb plagiarism. We believe that through a deeper understanding of students’ perspectives of plagiarism, we could start to develop an all-encompassing strategy to deal with plagiarism at university level. database used to select articles for inclusion in this literature review was Google Scholar. Articles published in scholarly, reliably peer-reviewed journals were included. Keywords used for searching include “undergraduate students”, “postgraduate students”, “plagiarism”, “referencing” and “perspective”. Most of the articles used focus on research done over the last 20 years or more in order to provide give a historic perspective of the persistence of the plagiarism problem over time. The articles were also from multiple contexts to highlight the complexity and the commonality of the problem. Forward and backward snowballing was used to obtain more relevant articles. Several articles address the issue of plagiarism in connection with other related concepts, such as referencing. This was in order to highlight the multidimensional issue of plagiarism.