Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-07-02/Analysis

The Internet is shortening the distance, raising awareness but in some cases gives students, researchers the possibilities that are lowering the education and resarch quality (plagiarism - copy & paste, …). Plagiarism is “at home” everywhere. I would like to inform you about the positive effects that caused the nationwide Central Repository of Theses and Dissertations and nationwide Plagiarism Detection System (we are using the name ANTIPLAG to speak about of both systems) in Slovakia.

All Slovak higher education institutions are obligatory users of ANTIPLAG since 2010. Since September 1st 2011 there is public access (open access) enabled to the central repository. In two months we will have in the CR more than 300 thousand of theses and dissertations.

Independent international research project “Impact of Policies for Plagiarism in Higher Education Across Europe” (IPPHEAE, EU funded, 2010-2013, Project Lead Partner: Coventry University, United Kingdom) carried out a survey in all EU countries. They prepared country reports for 27 EU countries (http://ippheae.eu/project-results). In the report “Plagiarism Policies in Slovakia” you can read this:

“There were some notable differences between the Slovak surveys and the EU average. Almost all Slovak students (99%!) become aware of plagiarism before or during their bachelor studies. The EU average shows that 20% of students become aware of plagiarism during their masters/PhD degree or are still not sure about it.”

" ... Slovak students are the most aware of plagiarism among all EU countries"

"The most outstanding example of good practice is definitely the existence of national repository of theses. As it is run centrally and universities are obliged to upload their theses, students from all institutions have theoretically the same conditions. The other aspect is that the software tool provides just a protocol for matching with other sources. The decision about whether a given case is plagiarism or not lies with teachers and/or the examination committee and these may not always follow the same procedures."

"Compared to other countries, Slovakia should be praised for its achievements. And it already was: The European Commission has awarded the Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information the European Prize for Innovation in Public Administration." More: http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/index_en.cfm?section=admin-innovators

"The responses from Slovak students demonstrated the highest level of understanding about plagiarism within the whole Europe. Their unwillingness (in comparison with other countries) to receive more training on plagiarism is therefore understandable. The research team of the IPPHEAE project would also like to praise Slovakia for existence of national repository of theses and built-in plagiarism detection tools."

In case of your interest you can contact us, your questions and feedback are welcome; you have the possibility to read these papers:

Barrier to thriving plagiarism. Conference paper - The 5th International Plagiarism Conference, 2012. Available at: http://archive.plagiarismadvice.org/documents/conference2012/finalpapers/Kravjar_fullpaper.pdf

Strategies and responses to plagiarism in Slovakia. PLAGIARISM ACROSS EUROPE AND BEYOND - Conference Proceedings, 2013, pp. 201-215 Available at: http://ippheae.pefka.mendelu.cz/files/proceedings.pdf.

The Occurrence of the Terms akademická etika and akademická integrita in Texts on the Internet and in the Media, 2013. Available at: https://www.vedatechnika.sk/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=89 or http://ncpvat.cvtisr.sk/buxus/generate_page.php?page_id=938.


  • Yes, plagiarism is huge and at the same time the global problem. It is interesting that is not solved on a country level. The only exception, in my opinion, is Slovakia. Slovakia has an unique experience with plagiarism fight at higher education institutions on a national level. There are operated two cooperating systems: Nationwide Plagiarism Detection System + Nationwide Repository of Theses and Dissertations (since May, 2010). More details you can find here:[[1]].

Kravjar (talk) 09:16, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Discuss this story

  • Great article about a great solution to a huge problem. It should be clear that the problem of plagiarism starts at the top. University administrators need to take action to prevent plagiarism at all levels, not fight against the exposure of plagiarism as an "undignified spectacle." Plagiarism likely occurs at all university levels in all countries, simply because administrators do very little to stop it. No one country should be singled out, but those countries where a doctorate is often used as a resume-polisher for politicians, are particularly at risk. Based on my experiences in Russia and Eastern Europe in general, there could be huge problems there. I also expect that there are similar problems in the UK and the US. No country is immune, as far as I can tell. Smallbones (talk) 14:16, 3 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I wonder whether the next move is to boost participation at those wiki sites, perhaps both from the ranks of the movement and by attracting outsiders in. More participants means more can be scrutinised, and a greater chance the process will eventually force the universities and supervisors/instructors to take the matter more seriously. In my view, supervisors need a good boot up the ... on this. It's the cost of doing business, and they need to be professionally thorough in conveying the ethics to their charges. Nothing less will do. Tony (talk) 04:34, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have not seen any, but I would love to be directed toward, or have someone create, and automated plagarism checking tool for Wikipedia, and perhaps it could be used beyond Wikipedia. Do we have any such tools? Judgesurreal777 (talk) 00:53, 7 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • I have been testing plagiarism detection software since 2004 [2], but the software does not live up to our expectations. If you do have two texts you want to compare, VroniPlag Wiki has implemented Dick Groene's Sim_text in Java-Script for coloring similarities in texts: [3]. You put one text in the left box, one in the right and press "Texte vergleichen!". --WiseWoman (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]