Student resort to academic dishonesty for many reasons. In a paper entitled "The Front End Load of Student Research," author David Loertscher describes his interesting research on college students' challenges with the research process. Students give the following examples of what might cause them to plagiarize a research paper:
- Feeling that nothing new is being said
- Having to change and refine how to write a research paper from class to class
- Information overload
- Too much irrelevant information; cannot locate what is needed from online results
- They get hung up trying to find the "perfect source"
- Not knowing what to look for, yet still sifting through articles that might fit
- Trouble finding books on library shelves
- Can find the citation online, but cannot find the fulltext article in a database
- Trouble finding statistical information online
- Having to buy a source unavailable on campus
- Conducting research to meet another person's expectations
- Too many results from a Google search and having to sort through them
