PLAGIARISM IN UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC PAPERS

In university teaching there is a reality too frequent for us to not get worried: we meet an increasing problem which affects particularly to firsts levels -although not only. As teachers, we have not very satisfactory experiences when we read academic papers with suspect paragraphs: we know our students linguistic level and we are almost sure that they have not written certain things. Sometimes we can attribute to them bad intentions, but in most cases their attitude is product of disinformation. They have done school class works in their previous studies, but they haven't received the adequate formation. Information and communication technologies are offering us many sources and opportunities for get info about a subject, but we must know how to incorporate it in our creations. They must cite, but how do that? Can they compose a patchwork based in citations? They have to learn to create something new, other to reformulate ideas of other authors by stealing nothing to anybody. They must do themselves the works, they cannot copy shamelessly, and we must notice when they do not respecter the academic laws. We cannot suppose they are trusty, loyal, we must doubt so we can identify the faults and correct them. Despite that, it is a fact that students have general lack of information in these subjects. We must provide them with effective tools which they can give response to our exigencies, but we must also provide ourselves to be able to recognize quickly the plagiarism, identify its types and know how to proceed in each case. With our experience in both aspects it is possible to have success in this undertaking. It is always interesting to share recipes, to exchange advices, to expose errors and observations with other professionals of education.