The opinion of Slovak Accreditation Agency for Higher Education on fighting plagiarism

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The Slovak Accreditation Agency for Higher Education considers plagiarism to be contradictory to the culture of quality at higher education institutions. Tolerating or mitigating the seriousness of plagiarism undermines public confidence in higher education institutions. They have the main responsibility for the quality of education provided. As part of the external quality assurance of higher education, the Agency has prepared new Accreditation Standards. They contain several requirements and mechanisms to eliminate plagiarism and other academic fraud. A higher education institution that does not know how to guarantee the effective detection of plagiarism and does not draw consequences for proven plagiarism and other academic fraud will not meet the standards and will not be accredited with an internal quality system. This can ultimately lead to its demise. The Agency calls on higher education institutions to pay increased attention to these issues when setting up and implementing policies, structures, and procedures for internal quality systems. Inspiring should be the good practice of several higher education institutions, which, in addition to the current final theses, also checked the final theses from the previous period to make sure that they do not show signs of plagiarism.