Just how serious an offence is academic plagiarism?

Judging by the ominous warnings issued to students by universities in the Anglo-Saxon world (Abasi & Graves, 2008) and the sense of moral outrage with which transgressors are pursued (Pennycook, 1996; Martin, 1994), the answer to that question would seem to be ‘very serious indeed’. In fact, the University of Oxford's website (n.d.) is unequivocal on the matter:

Consequently, those found guilty of ‘committing’ plagiarism (the collocation is significant) face the most severe penalties that academia can muster: expulsion, disgrace and, in extreme cases, even prosecution under the Copyright Act.

Yet in many other countries of the world, plagiarism, like other forms of academic corruption, is not viewed with quite the same degree of opprobrium. Gadpaille (2004, p. 57) reports that, in the unspecified Central European country where she worked, not only was cheating endemic in the culture, no shame seemed to accrue to the practice; instead, ‘information is widely viewed as common property; honour lies in sharing rather than monopolizing, and competition for grades is minimal’. Similarly, Sherman (1992, p. 191) found that first-year students in an Italian university gave verbatim answers without any kind of analysis or sourcing, clearly viewing this as ‘not only legitimate but correct and proper’; while Deckert (1993) claimed that the Chinese students in his study routinely engaged in a form of ‘learned plagiarism’ (p. 95), which involved, amongst other things, rote memorising and recycling (p. 140).

Clearly, then, there is a cultural dimension to plagiarism that urgently needs to be addressed in the increasingly globalised world of modern academia.

Attitudes towards authorship, originality and intellectual property have not always been what they are today (Randall, 2001; Kewes, 2003; Love, 2003). In mediaeval Scholasticism, the term ‘author’ (auctor) was reserved for those ancient authorities that had produced great truths in accordance with Christian doctrine, and contemporary writers, considered mere scriptores, compilatores or commentators2, were expected to copy them as faithfully as possible for the purpose of dissemination.