This paper presents, primarily and as main objective, the analysis of the factors associated with the phenomenon of cyber plagiarism among high school students of the Balearic Islands. Secondly, it does not want simply to describe a situation, it also pretends to provide strategies and measures to help and improve the current situation in secondary education levels.

The advent and penetration of the Internet and ICT has produced profound changes in education; most of them of positive nature. Nowadays, we have availability to a large amount of information, easy-access to countless resources, new ways of learning, among many other opportunities. But also, it includes some negative aspects that have grown underneath. An example of this is plagiarism, a practice which has existed since ancient times (Comas, 2009), but has found on the Internet and ICT resources the opportunity to increase its incidence and has become a worrisome phenomenon (Rimer, 2003; Scanlon, 2003; Underwood & Szabo, 2003; Sureda & Comas, 2005; Campbell, 2006; Sunderland-Smith, 2008).

It exists a wide and increasing academic literature production over the issue of students’ academic plagiarism in the higher education arena. A recent study conducted by Comas, Sureda, Angulo & Mut, 2011)  based on: a) the search and retrieval of articles in academic journals in scientific databases, b) a descriptive statistical exploration of different analytical dimensions (location, form and content) of the documentation, and c) an exhaustive content analysis of articles, identified a total of 53 articles dealing with academic plagiarism in secondary education –very few if compared with the hundreds that deal with the issue in colleges and universities. Most theoretical approaches analyzed documentation and / or opinion, still quite few articles based on empirical approaches (specifically 15 of the total sample). The main dimensions addressed by the literature reviewed relate to: the prevalence of plagiarism, its causes and strategies to combat it. The available literature highlights the high prevalence of the phenomenon and the rise of this type of behaviour related to the increasing use of ICT as an educational tool and basic information source.

-Campbell, S. (2006). Perceptions of mobile phones in college classrooms: ringing, cheating, and classroom policies. Communication Education, 55(3), 280–294. -Comas, R. (2009). El ciberplagio y otras formas de deshonestidad académica entre el alumnado universitario. Thesis, Department of Applied Pedagogy and Educational Psychology, University of Balearic Islands. Spain. -Comas, R., Sureda, J., Angulo, F., & Mut, B. (2011). Academic Plagiarism amongst Secondary Education Students: State of the Art. ICERI 2011. Proceedings, pp. 4314-4321. Madrid, Spain. -Rimer, S. (2003). A campus fad that’s being copied: internet plagiarism seems on the rise. The New York Times, p. B7 -Scanlon, P. (2003). Student online plagiarism: how do we respond? College Teaching, 51, 161–165. -Sunderland-Smith, W. (2008). Plagiarism, the Internet, and student learning. New York: Routledge. -Sureda, J. & Comas, R. (2005). Fuentes de información y documentación a través de internet para investigadores en educación ambiental. Palma de Mallorca: FUEIB. -Underwood, J. & Szabo, A. (2003). Academic offences and e-learning: individual propensities in cheating. British Journal of Educational Technology, 34(4), 467–477.