Institutional policies to avoid dishonest practices in Spanish universities

Abstract

Dishonest behavior or practices are a concern in all universities around the world and are addressed differently in university institutions in different countries. This study focuses on the topic of academic integrity and pursues two objectives: on the one hand, to review the academic integrity policies aimed at avoiding plagiarism in Spanish universities, through the documents available there and, on the other hand, describe those documents in terms of their characteristics and their content. An analysis of the content of the 275 documents in the websites of 47 public universities Spanish is carried out. For the collection of information, a Computerized Registration Form was designed, and the information obtained was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The main findings underline that most of the documents located are in the vice-rectorates for scientific policy, innovation and transfer, in the Faculties of Education and Humanities and in degrees corresponding to the branch of knowledge of Social Sciences. Due to their regulatory nature, most of these documents are textual, or have an HTML format, and are linked to informative measures aimed at the university community in general and refer to applicable rules focused on informing, detailing ways of proceeding and even controlling or sanctioning certain behaviors, especially those aimed at the student body. The main conclusion of the study is the coincidence, in all the universities studied, of the need to carry out preventive, informative and sanctioning actions that should form part of a regulatory institutional framework.