This study investigated Iranian language students’ perception of and familiarity with plagiarism, their attitudes toward their professors regarding this issue, and their reasons for doing so. The participants were 122 undergraduate and graduate language students in Translation, Literature, TEFL, and Linguistics who filled out a validated and piloted questionnaire. Overall, the results indicated that students had different views about the definition of plagiarism and plagiarism was mostly perceived by students as using someone else’s words as if they were their own (...) rather than taking someone’s ideas without permission. It was also found that in their academic career, students mostly consider copying a completed assignment of their friend as an act of academic dishonesty. In addition, they mostly argued that professors at universities guess about who might have done plagiarism instead of checking it themselves and they used different strategies to detect plagiarism. The study also indicated that Iranian students had different reasons for plagiarism but they mostly plagiarize because of easiness of plagiarism. Finally, the results of the survey showed that the majority learned about plagiarism from their university professors. (shrink)

The literature suggests that a whole-institution culture of academic integrity is needed in order to prevent academic integrity breaches. It is also suggested that the national cultures and individual backgrounds of academic staff and students can impact on their propensity to breach academic integrity policies and on their uptake of initiatives aimed at enhancing academic culture. Much research has been conducted on academic integrity related to culture in the western world including the behaviours of international students, and some work has (...) been conducted in various Asian contexts. However, little is known about how national culture and religion affect academic integrity in eastern countries with a Muslim majority. This paper presents a synthesis of the literature related to academic integrity and culture in regions where Muslims are the majority. An integrative literature review was carried out. Keywords were used to search and to collect academic integrity related research published from 2010 to 2020. The literature reviewed revealed that academics in countries with a Muslim majority faced challenges related to their local cultures, which included social and religious perceptions and practices. However, they were also able to draw upon some national and religious practices that supported and enhanced academic integrity. This paper concludes with recommendations for incorporating these positive cultural factors into an academic integrity framework for policy and practice appropriate for Muslim contexts. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated the ability of Iranian students of applied linguistics to discern plagiarism in writing, their perceptions of its ethical aspects, their characterizations of plagiarists, and their perspectives on why they may commit plagiarism. In so doing, a slightly revised version of Deckert’s 1993 questionnaire, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, was electronically distributed among 156 graduate students of applied linguistics. The results of the quantitative data analysis revealed some understanding of the concept but an inconsistent performance (...) in recognizing plagiarism. Regarding issues of ethics and fairness, they were concerned with their own needs along with the original writer’s rights more than with rights of their classmates, colleagues, or teachers. They regarded unfamiliarity with the concept and nature of plagiarism as the main reason for committing it. The analysis of the qualitative data yielded the following reasons for students’ plagiarism: students’ unfamiliarity with plagiarism, students’ low academic writing skills, teachers’ carelessness and leniency, students’ lack of time, students’ laziness and deceitfulness, educational system and its policies, students’ low language proficiency, students’ unfamiliarity with the subject of writing, and teachers’ high expectations. In conclusion, some suggestions are offered as to how to decrease the rate of plagiarism. (shrink)

Today, the speed at which science and technology is progressing around the world is so fast that any lag in this race may result in irrevocable consequences for certain countries. For emerging scientific powers such as Iran, this issue is a matter of the country's reputation. This study seeks to investigate plagiarism in different fields of science in Iran. With the growing number of scientific publications in Iran, several reports about the increase of plagiarism in Iranian academia have been published. (...) Hence, the current study aims to investigate whether there is any difference between plagiarism volumes in different fields of study in Iran. If so, what about other countries? Specifically, we will examine if there is any significant difference in these statistics among five countries: Iran, United States, Turkey, Australia, and China.We analyzed one percent of the articles published by Iranian researchers in international journals in 2010 and 50 articles by authors from the United States, Turkey, Australia and China . Our tool was the premium version of a plagiarism checker software named Dustball. Using the software, we could detect the exact percentage of copy and pasted text from other sources.Our results show that there was no trace of plagiarism in 6 out of 27 fields under consideration for Iranian papers. Unfortunately, most cases of plagiarism were reported in three scientific fields, with medicine on top of the list. Generally, there were 8 fields with plagiarism of 30 percent or more. Our results for other countries illustrate that in medicine, the United States, Turkey, Australia and China had a plagiarism rate of 18 percent, 38 percent, 32 percent and 36 percent respectively and the rate in the field of engineering was 12 percent, 34 percent, 28 percent, 36 percent respectively. The paper suggests that more frequent instances of plagiarism in Iranian articles are due to the unawareness of the international standards of science writing and editing. According to our interesting results about other countries, we find that in the field of engineering, Iran with an 11 percent plagiarism rate has the best situation even relative to the United States with 12 percent but in medicine Iran has the higher rate .The main limitation is this study pertains to the validity of the plagiarism checker software. In Iran, access to strong and free plagiarism checker software is not provided. However, for covering this limitation, we purchased an account from Dustball that offers 3 times more powerful detection. Moreover, while the application of the above-mentioned software might be considered a limitation for this study, the software tends to under-report the plagiarism percentage in scientific papers. (shrink)