The Senior Proctor has warned of a rise in the number of investigated plagiarism cases, and highlighted the need to improve the measures that deal with plagiarism.
The past year has seen between 20 and 30 instances of investigated plagiarism. Of these, around 15 were deemed to be serious cases. This is around double the amount of cases that came to light the previous year.
Professor Martin Williams, who has just completed his term as Senior Proctor, explained in the students’ motivation for plagiarism as often being “an act of panic caused by time pressure.”
Jonny Medland, OUSU Access and Academic Affairs officer said, “Many cases of plagiarism stem from poor understanding of footnoting or lack of care in citing evidence and are completely unintentional.”
Professor Williams commented that there is perhaps less plagiarism at Oxford than elsewhere “due to the virtuous nature of our students”.
