FOI_24-312 Plagiarism detection tools
Date of response: 29 November 2024
We have now considered your Freedom of Information request of 15 November 2024 for the following information:
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and on behalf of The Times newspaper, I would like to request the following information regarding the extent of AI plagiarism at UK universities:
Question 1. Does your university use tools to detect AI-generated content in student submissions?
Question 2. In the past three years, how many students has your university disciplined for breaking the university’s policy on the use of AI?
Question 3. What were the outcomes of these disciplinary decisions?
Our response:
We regret that on this occasion it is not possible to provide the requested information.
Under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act, we can confirm that the University does hold the information requested, however on this occasion it is not possible for us to provide any of the information relating to the number of students disciplined for breaking the University’s policies on the use of Artificial Intelligence, and the outcomes of disciplinary decisions.
We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
Information relating to academic disciplinary cases, specifically those noted as plagiarism and collusion, and the outcomes of academic disciplinary investigations is held by our Learning and Teaching Service (LTS).
For the academic year 2023-24 alone, have identified 459 cases of suspected plagiarism and collusion which may fall into the scope of your request. The only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate each individual case record manually.
We have calculated it would take 10 minutes per individual case, or 76.5 hours, to extract the information you seek. Which exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above.
We have considered whether to provide a smaller date range would be plausible within the appropriate limit, however cases of suspected plagiarism and collusion submitted to LTS for investigation can take time to come to a conclusion and therefore, we would not be able to provide to you the latest month’s figures as an example.
To assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we would be able to respond to question 1 of your request should you wish to resubmit.
Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request.
We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working-day time-limit will begin again.
We are sorry we cannot provide the data you requested, but trust this response explains our position.