Abstract:

There is a lack of studies that analyze the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) knowledge, awareness and students’ positive or negative behavior at university education context. The negative behavior in this research paper is defined as students’ commitment to plagiarism and copyrights infringements.

The fast growing trend of “epidemic cheating” was addressed by Park (2010), which emphasizes the lack of clear presentation about nature of the plagiarism problem, the changing through time, the variation between undergraduates and graduate students. In this regard, this paper argues that there are differences between students coming from Faculties that have introduced IPR (IPR committed Faculties) and those that did not introduce IPR as a part of their educational program (non-IPR committed Faculties). The increased access to Internet raises many reasons for students to violate the IPR and downplay the importance of plagiarism (Park, 2010). The Internet has impact on students’ attitude on intellectual property and rise the necessity of respect of intellectual property among institutions worldwide (Marshall & Garry, 2005).

The overall objective of the research is to give a policy recommendation to the non-IPR institutions regarding their academic program and teaching activities. This would follow an empirical testing and analysis of the relationship between the knowledge and the level of IPR awareness, and their influence over students’ behavior. In this regard, the paper tests if students from the IPR committed Faculties have higher knowledge and awareness of IPR and respectively, lower index of negative behavior. Furthermore, it argues that with every following academic year, the students from non-IPR Faculties increase their IPR awareness even they are not formally introduced with such program.

The empirical analysis will be conducted at the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Food –Skopje (FASF) as a non-IPR committed Institution and the Faculty of Law (FL) as IPR committed Institution, at the biggest State University in Republic of Macedonia. The probability sample included representative number of students enrolled in each academic year of studies in September 2016. A semi-structured questionnaire shall give insights of two issues: 1. General students’ information and knowledge (structured questionnaire) and 2. Students’ awareness (scenario survey) and behavior (analysis of the influencing factors). Regression and factor analysis will be used to determinate the relationship of the knowledge, awareness and students’ behavior.

The research results and conclusions will have implications in three directions. Firstly, the novelty of the research presents a ground for the current status of the students’ knowledge, awareness and behavior towards IPR. The constant progress should be evident with the further upgrade and comparative analysis of the same sample of students from first year of studies up to the diploma thesis. Secondly, the empirical analysis will provide insights of the scarcity and factors that influence the behavior thus enabling further recommendation to the general policy of the non-IPR committed Faculties and decreasing the students’ negative behavior. Thirdly, the research will address the importance of promotion of academic integrity and possible adoption of formal codes so to improve to students’ ethics, social responsibility and institutional quality enhancement.

Keywords:

Intellectual Property Rights, awareness, students' behavior, IPR policy recommendation.