academic cyberplagiarism: tracing the causes to reach solutions

Plagiarism is a symptom of a crisis in positioning, the tip of the iceberg of the necessary reshaping of the roles of the teaching staff, the students, the library staff and the administrative staff in our universities. Similarly, the various arguments and stances associated with academic plagiarism also point to the relationship between knowledge and society. In short, in-depth discussions and reflection are needed for remedying a situation we perceive as dangerous.The collection of articles we have drawn up for this paper - articles we hope will be of assistance in the debate that is needed - tackle academic plagiarism from various standpoints. On the one hand, Santiago Cavanillas (lecturer in Law at the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain) introduces the regulatory side in connection with academic plagiarism. Lecturers Lidija Bilic-Zulle and Mladen Petrovecki (School of Medicine, University of Rijeka, Croatia) draw up a present-day overview of the issue on the basis of the research done on academic plagiarism in Europe in recent years. Karl Jones (Liverpool John Moores University, UK) presents and describes the main plagiarism-detection tools implemented in universities. Lastly, the authors of this introduction and Mercè Morey present a compendium of websites, portals and bibliographic references that may awaken readers' interest in this subject.