Nowadays, the Internet offers great help for academic research, but it also provides an easy way to plagiarize.

An article in the People's Daily reports that a company offering help to academic institutes allows and even encourages students to cheat. The company runs an online database of academic research information. It provides an easy channel for those students who are inclined to download information or even copy other people's work when writing a paper.

The article points out that the phenomenon is probably just a tip of the iceberg. In fact, the academic field has now become chaotic due to a lack of strict rules. As an overseas research shows, on average, one to five percent of papers that have been published involve plagiarism and cheating. What's worse, the rate is higher in Asian countries.

In a bid to clarify the academic environment, the article stresses that we should implement a strict checking system on academic papers and a preview mechanism in the process of academic research.