Academic plagiarism prevalence among Spanish undergraduate students: an exploratory analysis

Abstract

Introduction: The present research article is an exploratory study on academic plagiarism practices among Spanish university students.Materials and methods: To answer the main research questions, we based our work on a cross-sectional survey of the targeted population. The sample consisted of a total of 560 students and the procedure was non-probability sampling.Results and conclusions: the research findings show that the Internet has become the students’ main source for the plagiarism of academic essays. Furthermore, there is also a substantial prevalence of self-plagiarism and peer-to-peer (p2p) plagiarism when elaborating essays.