Reducing plagiarism through academic misconduct education

In short

From university records, the authors report a 37.01% fall in detected plagiarism after an academic English programme began, plagiarised work at 3.46% of submissions, and too little data to judge contract cheating.

What it looked at

A bespoke English for Academic Purposes programme introduced at university level, aimed at stronger academic writing, less plagiarism and detecting contract cheating. Detected plagiarism across 12 semesters of misconduct data (n = 12,937) was compared before and after the programme. What the 12,937 counts is not stated.

What it means for teaching

A dedicated academic writing programme may be worth weighing as one prevention measure, going by the misconduct records reported.

Limits

Figures concern detected cases, not all plagiarism. Data were too limited to show any effect on contract cheating, and the design rests on misconduct records from before and after the programme.

Cited 189 times by other papers, as counted by OpenAlex in November 2026. A count measures attention, not quality.