Awareness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe study suggests that the findings indicate that a majority of both students and faculty in Sub-Saharan African higher educational institutions are aware of plagiarism and understand what constitutes plagiarism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It says that dominant forms of plagiarism include self-plagiarism, branded plagiarism and commission plagiarism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While self-plagiarism results when a student or an academic reproduces their own prior works without fully acknowledging them, branded plagiarism is a form of \u2018pick and use\u2019 behaviour that involves using someone else\u2019s ideas or works without giving credit to the original author. Commission plagiarism results when students buy papers or contract commercial thesis writers to compose work for them without properly acknowledging them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study revealed that the main causes of plagiarism were easy access to digital information and resources; poor supervision of students; pressure on academics to publish for promotion; and insufficient skills development regarding ethical academic writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study noted that the effects of plagiarism on higher education institutions included: a defeat of the purpose of research enterprises; loss of quality research outputs; loss of academic and national integrity; loss of credibility of higher educational certificates; and loss of research funding opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, the impact of studies on plagiarism seems to be limited. The study notes that the papers attracted only a few citations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe visibility of studies in the field is limited in the plagiarism-literature space for Sub-Saharan Africa,\u201d the study notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The authors go on to argue that plagiarism does not seem to be widely discussed and documented, thus affecting the ability of higher educational institutions to understand its reputational effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study notes that interventions to stop plagiarism, such as the use of plagiarism detection software and policies, face several challenges, ranging from a lack of well-trained academic experts to detect and report plagiarism cases to reluctance on the part of technical administrative staff to investigate works for traces of plagiarism. In some cases, there was a lack of punitive measures against students and researchers involved in plagiarism, according to the study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recommendations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIn order to deal with these challenges, the authors recommend that ethicists concerned with quality research promotion increase their efforts in identifying and reporting plagiarism cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, the authors suggest that institutions devise a broader, more encompassing approach to the problem at sub-regional level. This will help in the design of \u201call-country-inclusive\u201d policies that take account of similar causal factors between countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study also calls for more research to unearth newer kinds of plagiarism and says authors must be encouraged to conduct more studies based on the views of academics, students and administrative staff rather than stick to documentary desktop analysis. This would help in the formulation and implementation of appropriate policies aimed at reducing plagiarism in tertiary education in Sub-Saharan Africa, it argues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also recommends a standard quality assurance framework for assessing and communicating plagiarism cases among higher educational institutions in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Professor Juma Shabani, the director of the doctoral school at the University of Burundi and the former director of development, coordination and monitoring of UNESCO programmes with a special focus on Africa, told University World News<\/em> the study provides \u201cimportant take-away messages\u201d to higher education policymakers and decision-makers seeking to confront plagiarism which, he said, is considered a \u201cpoor academic practice and unethical behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cAfrican universities must make use of the paper\u2019s recommendations by integrating them into their anti-plagiarism action plans to protect intellectual honesty and academic integrity, along with carrying out more plagiarism studies to raise educational and research standards,\u201d Shabani said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A recent study argues that the quality of teaching, learning and research in Sub-Saharan African universities will improve if the key forms of plagiarism and factors or conditions that open up opportunities for plagiarism among students and academics are resolved. The study, titled, \u2018Plagiarism in Higher Education (PLAGiHE) within Sub-Saharan Africa: A systematic review of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-education-events","category-africa-education-news","category-fau-partners-news-4-edu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":691,"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whedafrica.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}