Plagiarism in theses: A nationwide concern from the perspective of university instructors

Since the advent of the Internet, university students have had access to countless books and articles which had been a great asset for both students and research communities around the world. However, due to various factors, plagiarism which means, according to Cambridge Dictionary, using another person’s ideas or work and pretending that it is your own has been a widespread problem in academic writing since then. In this regard, many scholars in many different countries investigated the reasons for student plagiarism using self-report surveys and interviews. However, in recent years, the importance of studying faculty members’ perceptions in terms of the contributing factors to plagiarism has become more evident. In the present study, we considered instructors’ viewpoints in order to gain more insights into the misconduct in Iranian universities. We believe our findings might help to tackle plagiarism more effectively as we took the ideas of the instructors into consideration.