AN AWARENESS OF PLAGIARISM AMONG LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE STUDENTS, FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC OFFA, KWARA STATE

ABSTRACT Plagiarism is an academic vice that has not been alleviated by the fact that information access and usage has become easy owing to the technological development. The proposed paper is aimed at exploring the level of awareness, reasons and strategies of curbing plagiarism among undergraduate students at Federal Polytechnic, Offa, Kwara State, Nigeria. The descriptive survey research approach was used. This study has 15, 400 as its population. The number of samples to be used in the study was 370 that were calculated with the help of Research Advisor table. Data collection was mostly conducted with the help of questionnaire; this was supplemented with personal observation. 370 questionnaires were given out but 346 were returned by the students (i.e. ND II and HND II). Simple percentage with frequency table was used to provide the analysis. The findings revealed that the partial awareness of plagiarism (29.4) and the major causes of plagiarism as based on the finding are peer influence (50.9) and the genuine lack of knowledge (49.1) which make the development of sensitization(54.7%) and the advising of lecturers on citations and references (50.5) the strategies to curb plagiarism in higher institutions. The research came up with the conclusion that the peer influence and the absence of true comprehension is marked as the key cause of plagiarism. The findings were used to make the recommendations including; the authorities in polytechnic should immediately intensify the efforts by implementing machinery to ensure serious awareness of plagiarism and generally copyright infringement amongst students; the Federal Government through her agency (Federal Ministry Education, NBTE) should come up with strict rules of dealing with plagiarism, Instructors and lecturers should use campus writing and academic centres to sensitize students about plagiarism and good writing skills among others.