The plagiarism phenomenon and its perception in the academia

The article analyzes the plagiarism phenomenon from the point of view of Russian and foreign scholars. The authors demonstrate different opinions on this phenomenon related to the comprehension of the nature of science and to various cultural traditions. The opinions range from a rather tolerant attitude towards plagiarism to a radically intolerant one. The complex and ambiguous position of peer reviewers and experts in the system of ethical relations of all subjects of scientific publications is shown. The article focuses on the situational and dynamic traits of scientific ethos. In general, the main idea of the article is the unconditional diffusion of plagiarism with its stable place in the reality and in the perception of the academia members. An attempt has been made to examine the ethical interrelationship of the two most important social institutions - education and science - in the context of the value shift in society. Plagiarism is particularly relevant in the academic milieu. Fighting scientific plagiarism is not a rhetorical question. The scale of plagiarism according to Russian scholars has been revealed through a local sociological survey; its results are presented in the article. A study in a particular university allowed the authors to assess the perception of plagiarism from the standpoint of the “permissible - impermissible” attitude, and to reveal various shades of this attitude. The authors proved the adequacy of the developed research tool (a questionnaire), which is important in view of the delicacy of the topic. The questionnaire was compiled based on the discourse on the distribution of plagiarism in the Russian academic community, taking into account the opinions of leading experts and scholars - sociologists, political scientists, and philosophers. The data obtained allow to draw a conclusion about the undoubted relevance of the problem of scientific plagiarism, the features of which are: abundance, complexity and ambiguity, dependence on the situation and on the most decisive sociocultural factor (pressure on scholars, demand of research results, improvement in the quality of professional growth, deadlines, limited resources). Other important factors are technological (the possibilities of modern technology, copying speed, information technology literacy) and personal psychological (motivation for intellectual theft from a particular researcher due to the absence of moral obligations). The survey clearly showed that plagiarism is perceived primarily as misappropriation of someone else's achievements and violation of non-property rights. Unfortunately, the question of the inadmissibility of scientific plagiarism remains open: only half of the representatives of the academic community who volunteered to participate in the survey claim this. The authors found that the problematic range, based on the opinion of the respondents, was from 30 to 40% of plagiarism in a research work. It is indicative that about half of the respondents consider the activity of Dissernet.org useful. In general, the authors do not consider the ethical side of scientific plagiarism to be clarified and unambiguous. This should be discussed in further publications of the results of a more methodologically thorough research. The authors claim that it is scholars who committed plagiarism that are fully responsible for this violation of scientific ethos that grossly distorts the meaning and goals of scientific activities.

Keywords

Authors

References