Good academic practice is more than the avoidance of clear-cut cheating. It also involves
navigation of the gray zones between cheating and good practice. The existing literature
has left students’ understanding of gray zone practices largely unexplored. To begin
filling in this gap, we present results from a questionnaire study involving N = 1639
undergraduate students from seven European countries representing all major disciplines.
We show that large numbers of these students are unable to identify gray area issues
and lack sensitivity to the context dependence of these. We also show that a considerable
proportion of students have a poor understanding of concepts like plagiarism and falsification,
not only in gray zone scenarios, but also in cases of relatively clear-cut cheating.
Our results are similar across the faculties and countries of study, and even for
students who have attended academic integrity training. We discuss the implications
of this for academic integrity training.