There’s an interesting article in the Times Higher (17 June 2010) which proposes a method of ‘scoring’ plagiarism. The article provides three examples of plagiarism, how these offences are scored, and how a decision on censure is reached.
As the Times higher puts it:
Academics in the UK have drawn up a national tariff covering penalties for student plagiarism, which could be adopted as a worldwide system for dealing with offenders.
Studies in this area have found high levels of inconsistency in the penalties universities employ to punish students who are found guilty of copying, with wide variations between, and even within, institutions.
Now researchers from the advisory service plagiarismadvice.org have created a points-based system designed to act as a sector-wide “benchmark”. Setting out a range of penalties from informal warnings to expulsion, it allows staff to calculate a score for the seriousness of the offence and use this to select an appropriate penalty.
Links
The Plagiarism Reference Tariff is based on a national research consultation exercise on behalf of plagiarismadvice.org and the full report and tariff metric is available for download from:
