A recent study led by the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Food and Resource Economics of high school and university students in seven European countries found that roughly half are worried about the use of plagiarism detection software in education. Researchers found these concerns can lead to counterproductive behaviors and ineffective learning. Examples of such behaviors include excessive footnoting (80-90 footnotes in a 12-page paper), using language designed to evade detection, and omitting source references altogether. These findings highlight the challenges students face in navigating institutional policies surrounding this software, which compares texts to identify plagiarism.
The study explored student anxieties surrounding plagiarism text-matching software (TMS) in Switzerland, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Portugal, and Slovenia. The research, conducted by the Department of Food and Resource Economics, aimed to better understand these concerns. When asked about their institutions’ use of plagiarism software, 47% of high school students and 55% of undergraduates expressed worries about being monitored—concerns that go beyond simply fearing detection of plagiarism. Lead author Mads Goddiksen, a postdoctoral researcher, explained that these anxieties largely arise from uncertainty about how the software is used and what constitutes plagiarism.
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“It’s paradoxical that a technology intended to ensure academic integrity is causing unnecessary worries among students. Our research clearly shows that uncertainty about how the software operates, how it’s used, and what constitutes plagiarism leads to worries and counterproductive writing practices,” says the researcher.
In interviews, students described how they avoid reusing sources from previous assignments or unnecessarily rewrite texts to “outsmart” the plagiarism software – a development that Mads Goddiksen warns against:
“The biggest issue isn’t the worry itself, but that students lose focus on writing well and ethically. Instead, it becomes about avoiding the software flagging something as problematic. This affects the quality of both their assignments and overall education,” he explains.
Goddiksen emphasizes that plagiarism detection software cannot independently determine whether plagiarism has occurred – it merely highlights text overlaps. Understanding this distinction is crucial.
“There’s nothing inherently wrong with paraphrasing or reproducing content from other sources in an assignment – this is largely what academic writing involves, as long as it’s done transparently. However, today, such practices may pop up in plagiarism checks because the software identifies similarities in phrases and formulations. This makes students nervous and renders the software ineffective if used on its own,” Goddiksen explains.
However, many students in the study mistakenly believe that the software alone determines what counts as plagiarism, even though this is not the case. This misunderstanding makes the students change their writing behavior to adapt to the perceived control. For example, one Danish undergraduate stated:
”I am really afraid to gamble with these things. So I make a lot of footnotes, roughly 80–90 in a 12-page assignment. I have not had any critique yet, but I don’t think it is what you are actually supposed to do.”
