The purpose of the current study was to explore how effectively journal author guides communicate with graduate students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in Taiwan. A 10-item three-tier test was developed to explore the participants’ (1) confidence level in their reading comprehension of excerpts from author guides, (2) their actual comprehension, and (3) their understanding, if any. The test consisted of 10 excerpts from author guides that covered a variety of topics related to plagiarism. The test was administered (...) to 46 EFL graduate students. The findings revealed that the selected excerpts from the author guides caused confusion, which led to misunderstanding by the readers. Among the 10 types of plagiarism, citation issues and copying of methods sections were the the most understood, whereas self-plagiarism was the least understood type. (shrink)

Plagiarism is plaguing research publications in many fields. It is problematic by being misleading about who deserves credit for scientific results, images, text or ideas, by involving scientific fraud and by distorting meta-analyses. However, different research traditions put different emphasis on the originality of text. Traditional rules regarding correct quotation seem to fit the humanities and many social sciences better than the natural and engineering sciences. This article suggests that we should stop applying a common standard regarding plagiarism to all (...) research fields and instead openly acknowledge that there are differences in what aspects of a paper are important to scientific development in different research areas. More specifically, the article discusses, as a thought experiment, whether the introduction of software supporting text production for research publications in the natural and engineering sciences – thereby further reducing the importance of who created what sentences – would be unacceptable or, quite the reverse, a means to further promote scientific progress. It is concluded that there are no valid principled arguments against introducing such software support for text production in scientific papers, while there are several advantages. Correctly handled, using such software would not involve plagiarism, because it would not be misleading about who deserves credit. (shrink)

This article diagnoses the problem of plagiarism in academic books and articles in the disciplines of philosophy and theology. It identifies three impediments to institutional reform. They are: (1) a misplaced desire to preserve personal and institutional reputations; (2) a failure to recognize that attribution in academic writing admits of degrees; and (3) a disproportionate emphasis on the socalled “intention to plagiarize.” A detailed case study provides an illustration of the need for institutional reform in the post-publication processes in the (...) disciplines of philosophy and theology. (shrink)

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to lay out some of the more complex issues arising in the area of publication ethics. The impact of electronic publishing and electronic information is a main focus of the paper. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws in particular upon the work of the Committee on Publication Ethics including illustrative cases discussed at the forum, guidelines and discussion documents. Findings – Three areas are highlighted to stimulate discussion around challenges of publication ethics in (...) the digital era. These are the role of the internet in facilitating misconduct, the issue of confidentiality in publishing and how incentives in research assessments drive author behavior. Originality/value – The paper brings together a variety of issues discussed under the broader umbrella of electronic information and new technologies in publishing. (shrink)

This paper discusses the criminalization of scientific misconduct, as discussed and defended in the bioethics literature. In doing so it argues against the claim that fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP) together identify the most serious forms of misconduct, which hence ought to be criminalized, whereas other forms of misconduct should not. Drawing the line strictly at FFP is problematic both in terms of what is included and what is excluded. It is also argued that the criminalization of scientific misconduct, despite (...) its anticipated benefits, is at risk of giving the false impression that dubious practices falling outside the legal regulation “do not count”. Some doubts are also raised concerning whether criminalization of the most serious forms of misconduct will lower the burdens for universities or successfully increase research integrity. Rather, with or without criminalization, other measures must be taken and are probably more important in order to foster a more healthy research environment. (shrink)

The article offers analyses of the phenomenon of copying (plagiarism) in higher education. The analyses were based on a quantitative survey using questionnaires, conducted in 2019 at one of the Polish universities. Plagiarism is discussed here both as an element of the learning process and a subject of public practices. The article presents students’ definitions of plagiarism, their strategies for unclear or difficult situations, their experiences with plagiarism and their opinions on how serious and widespread this phenomenon is. Focusing on (...) the non-plagiarism norm, that is the rule that students are not allowed to plagiarize, and in order to redefine it we have determined two strategies adopted by students. The first is withdrawing in fear of making a mistake (omitting the norm), which means not using referencing in unclear situations, e.g. when the data about the source of information are absent. The second is reducing the scope of the norm applicability (limiting the norm), characterized by the fact that there are areas where the non-plagiarism norm must be observed more closely and those where it is not so important, e.g. respondents classify works as credit-level and diploma-level texts, as in the credit-level work they “can” sometimes plagiarize since the detection rate is poor and consequences are not severe. The presented results are particularly significant for interpreting plagiarism in an international context (no uniform definition of plagiarism) and for policies aimed at limiting the scale of the phenomenon (plagiarism detection systems 1 ). (shrink)

Authors endure considerable hardship carrying out biomedical research, from generating ideas to completing their manuscripts and submitting their findings and data to a journal. When researchers submit to journals, they entrust their findings and ideas to editors and peer reviewers who are expected to respect the confidentiality of peer review. Inherent trust in peer review is built on the ethical conduct of authors, editors and reviewers, and on the respect of this confidentiality. If such confidentiality is breached by unethical reviewers (...) who might steal or plagiarize the authors’ ideas, researchers will lose trust in peer review and may resist submitting their findings to that journal. Science loses as a result, scientific and medical advances slow down, knowledge may become scarce, and it is unlikely that increasing bias in the literature will be detected or eliminated. In such a climate, society will ultimately be deprived from scientific and medical advances. Despite a rise in documented cases of abused peer review, there is still a relative lack of qualitative and quantitative studies on reviewer-related misconduct, most likely because evidence is difficult to come by. Our paper presents an assessment of editors’ and reviewers’ responsibilities in preserving the confidentiality of manuscripts during the peer review process, in response to a 2016 case of intellectual property theft by a reviewer. Our main objectives are to propose additional measures that would offer protection of authors’ intellectual ideas from predatory reviewers, and increase researchers’ awareness of the responsible reviewing of journal articles and reporting of biomedical research. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The discourse on honesty and dishonesty in academic work has seen considerable growth over the past two decades. This study empirically analyses the shifts in the literature over the past two decades in the research focus and most prolific authors, institutions, countries, and journals. A broad list of terms was employed from the Glossary of Academic Integrity to shortlist journal articles (n = 782) from Scopus. A bibliometric analysis was conducted for each decade and the results were compared. Research (...) outputs and number of clusters were over two-fold in the second compared to the first decade indicating an increase in volume and complexity. The study found a continued focus on plagiarism and academic misconduct research, though academic integrity and contract cheating emerged in the second decade. Shifts were evident in the output signifying a diversification of the research base and perspectives. Further research and action are needed to develop integrity as the broadest defense against dishonesty in all spheres of academia. (shrink)

Today, the Internet is a rich source of study materials, and Google Scholar offers free access to a large number of scientific articles. There are excellent research publications available in many more databases. Students have the option of easily copying the material. Reusing, paraphrasing, patchwriting, and ghostwriting without citing the original documents are plagiarism. Plagiarism is increasing in academics, particularly in research. This study aims to study the awareness of plagiarism and to analyze the reasons for plagiarism. The study samples (...) are the student teachers in India. For this study, we used a survey method, and the author prepared a questionnaire to collect data from the student teachers. Study respondents are the student teachers of the Regional Institute of Education Mysore; Purposive sampling was used to select samples. The total number of study respondents is 207. The findings of the study revealed that over 70 per cent of respondents mentioned reasons for plagiarism as lack of relevant literature studying, lack of preparation and time, difficulty checking every piece of work, do not know the manual citation style, lack of knowledge about bibliographic management software and also they stated that getting easily available materials on the internet is also a reason for plagiarism. The study recommends that teachers teach or conduct awareness programs on plagiarism, avoiding plagiarism, citation style, and software. (shrink)

Background: This article addressed one of the issues of research ethics that is called the nature of plagiarism coupled with involvement of intention. By definition, plagiarism is the attribution of others’ works to one’s own. This may be done intentionally and/or unintentionally. Some researchers believe that intention is not involved in the nature of plagiarism and an author who forgets to make references to the used sources has committed plagiarism since this forgetfulness has led to the attribution of others’ work (...) to one’s own. In contrast, some experts call such a person a wrongdoer, not a plagiarist. Conclusion: By likening this problem to the issue of involvement of intention in telling a lie, the author separates two kinds of plagiarism: act-plagiarism and agent-plagiarism. The intention does not involve in the act-plagiarism (to be an act an instance of plagiarism), but it is involved in the agent-plagiarism (to call someone plagiarist). As a result, an author who forgets to make reference is not a plagiarist, but his/her act is an instance of plagiarism. Keywords: Intention, Plagiarism, Intentional Plagiarism, Unintentional Plagiarism. (shrink)