Online University Students’ Perceptions on the Awareness of, Reasons for, and Solutions to Plagiarism in Higher Education: The Development of the AS&P Model to Combat Plagiarism

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Research into plagiarism over the years has shown that the issue can only be approached by adopting an integrated approach, and this is what is argued in this article. Therefore, the research presented is not entirely innovative or original; it's main contribution is that it focuses on a country that is not usually approached in this type of research: Pakistan. 

Methodologically, the authors state that the study does not have quantitative aims; however, figures are mentioned throughout the study, which is inconsistent with this aim. 

Section and subsection titles are often unclear and do not reflect the contents of those sections. The authors are advised to rephrase this for clarity. 

The authors conclude by arguing for the relevance of the proposed model (AS&P), but this is not new and neither is it demonstrated in the study. Actually, the authors themselves point this out as a limitation of the study, so mention to this in the conclusions needs to be rephrased. 

A careful and in-depth revision of English is required, as the text is often poorly written. Often, quotes of student comments miss closing quote marks. 

The authors need to revise the citations. There are several sentences that are identificar to previous sources, but their authorship is not acknowledged. In other instances, citations are provided but the text misses quote marks, is is mandatory for identical text. This cannot be accepted in any manuscript, and even less so in research about plagiarism. 

Author Response

First of all, we would like to thank the reviewer for the feedback on our article and giving us the chance to improve our article.  We have revised our article according to the comments made the reviewer, together with the comments of other reviewers.

We agree with the reviewer that this study may not look innovative in the most advanced countries, but it is one of very few studies on this topic that approached Pakistan. We have corrected the confusing terms like quantitative aims in the revised version. Further, we have revised the sections and sub-sections to make them more clear to the readers.

We understand that the previous version of article did not provide required information about the proposed model AS&P. We have added more information to explain the development process of AS&P,, and conclusions are rephrased

For English language, the article was sent to MDPI English Editing Services for checking and correcting the language of article. We believe the language of revised article meets the satisfactory levels.

The first version of articled was submitted to the journal following “Free Format Submission”. But we have revised the in-text citations and reference list as per the requirements of the journal.

We believe that the revisions we made following reviewers’ suggestions has improved the quality of the article, and the revised article meets the publication standards of the journal.  

Reviewer 2 Report

This study investigates Pakistani students’ perception and attitudes towards academic plagiarism. Open-ended questionnaire survey was administered and analyzed among online university student in Pakistan to fill the research gap. The research methodology is well presented, and data analysis is basically sound. The following are some of my concerns for the authors to consider.   

1. The aim and scope of Applied Sciences indicate that the journal provides an advanced forum on all aspects of applied natural sciences, covering all aspects of applied physics, applied chemistry, engineering, environmental and earth sciences, and applied biology. However, this manuscript is clearly a study in social science, which does not match well with the aim and scope of the journal.
2. The study deals with Pakistani students’ understanding of plagiarism. But what are the implications for other plagiarism studies? The authors must relate the research findings to the plagiarism studies in the wider context and explain its research significance.
3. The AS & P Model originally gave me an impression as a theoretical or analytical framework on which the authors base their analysis. However, it looks also like one aspect of the research findings elicited from the participants’ response, or the authors’ suggestions based on their understanding of the issue. So what AS&P model is really about? The authors need to make it clearer.   
4. There are some minor issues. For instance, APA 7th edition definition of plagiarism appears two times in the text (Page 1 and Page 4), which is unnecessary repetition. Part 3 should be Results and Discussion, as discussion is an integral part of it. There are occasional minor mistakes in the English language.

I hope these comments are helpful for the authors to revise.  

Author Response

First, we would like to thank the reviewer for reading our article. We are glad to receive the constructive feedback on our article, that we believe is important to improve the quality of this article. Please find our response below;

1. we agree with the reviewer and understand that the journal “Applied Sciences” provides an advanced forum on all aspects of applied natural sciences. However, the article was submitted to the special issue focused on the “AI in Education”, wherein topics of interest include “Studies concerning ethical issues about applying AI in education”. As the present article has investigated the reasons and solutions to the plagiarism among students enrolled in an online university, we believe that scope of this research fits well with the topics of interest of special issue.

Furthermore, as per the journal instructions on review process of articles, “All submitted manuscripts received by the Editorial Office will be checked by professional in-house Managing Editor to determine whether they are properly prepared and whether they follow the ethical policies of the journal, including those for human and animal experimentation….. After these checks, the Managing Editor will consult the journals’ Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editors to determine whether the manuscript fits the scope of the journal and whether it is scientifically sound”.

Thus, as it has been checked initially by the in-house Managing Editor for ethical policies and approved by the Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editors that this article meets the scope of the journal, we believe it meets the aims and scope of the journal.

2. we have revised our article to make the implications of this study for outside of Pakistan. We believe, the findings of this study are important to the other parts of the world, especially for the developing countries that share similar cultural and educational context like Pakistan.
3. we have revised the AS&P model in our revised article. And we have added more information about this model.
4. We have revised the article to correct the minor issues including the correction of repetitions.

We thank the reviewer again, and we believe the revision we made have improved the quality of this article, and revised version of article meets the publication requirements of the journal.

Reviewer 3 Report

First of all, congratulations on the work presented in your article.

The structure of the article seems to be adequate to the research developed.

The research topic is interesting, principally on higher education and, in the e-learning way.

Regarding improvements:

• the authors should explain how chose the 300 students;
• conclusions could be more clearly drawn regarding the accomplishment, or not, of the research objectives;
• the presentation of the excerpts from the testimonies collected must be standardised. They should choose whether or not to always put the sentences in italics. Some examples: lines 394 to 399 aren’t italicised, but lines 361 to 363 are already italicised. Both cases are quotes from the respondents.
• in Figure 1, I do not understand why the circle "student-teacher bad relationship" does not have any number associated with it;
• in figure 1 justify the legend;
• at the beginning of sentences or use unequal shapes to refer to numbers, e.g. line 393 and line 408;
• lines 511 and 513 with formatting errors.

Best of luck with your article!

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for reading our article. We are glad to see the suggestions made by the reviewer to improve our article. We have revised our article according to the suggestions made by all reviewers. We have revised our methods section to explain more on how we selected participants in our study. We also revised conclusions section. In addition, we have tried to follow standardized format in presenting excerpts, “italics”. We have hired MDPI English language editing services to improve the language. We hope the current form of article meets the requirements of publication.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have significantly improved from the first version, hence my recommendation is that the manuscript should be accepted for publication. I would recommend the authors to check two aspects, however: 

(1) two strings of text in lines 473 - 475 still need to be included in quote marks; 

(2) although the English has significantly improved, there are still some typos that need to be corrected. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed the concerns and comments in the previous review reports, and I believe that the current version meets the standard of publication in the journal.