THE ILLUSION OF UNDETECTED PLAGIARISM: AN ETHICAL AND ACADEMIC DILEMMA IN RESEARCH
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55519/JAMC-01-13258Keywords:
Academics, Attitudes, Intervention, plagiarism, policyAbstract
Background: Although plagiarism is widely recognised as academic fraud, awareness that it must be avoided at all levels remains limited. Faculty play a crucial role in fostering ethical professionalism, so clear perspectives on plagiarism are essential. This study was conducted to enhance positive attitudes toward plagiarism among faculty members of Jinnah Medical & Dental College and Sohail University through an academic intervention, measured by an improvement in awareness and ethical perception. Methods: This pre and post-academic intervention study was conducted at Jinnah Medical and Dental College, and Sohail University. A total of 130 faculty members were included through non-probability purposive sampling. The intervention took the form of a series of large group interactive sessions (LGIS) on plagiarism, covering its types, its consequences, and HEC policy regarding plagiarism in research methodology. A self-administered questionnaire was given to the same participants before and after the intervention , after written consent had been obtained. Results: Positive attitudes towards plagiarism improved significantly after the intervention (SEM=0.435, 95% CI= 0.371‒1.99, p=0.001) , negative attitudes changed significantly after the intervention (SEM=0.266, 95% CI= 0.123‒1.39, p=0.001) and faculty recognition of norms also improved after intervention (SEM=0.327, 95% CI=0.306‒1.70, p=0.001). Conclusion: Educational interventions are found to be effective in improving the overall attitudes and norms towards plagiarism. Regular educational sessions for researchers are therefore warranted to counter the rising trend of plagiarism.
References
1. Šprajc P, Urh M, Jerebic J, Trivan D, Jereb E. Reasons for plagiarism in higher education. Organizacija 2017;50(1):33–45.
2. Dawson MM, Overfield JA. Plagiarism: Do students know what it is? Biosci Educ 2006;8(1):1–5.
3. Martin BR. Whither research integrity? Plagiarism, self-plagiarism and coercive citation in an age of research assessment. Res Policy 2013;42(5):1005–14.
4. Selwyn N. ‘Not necessarily a bad thing: A study of online plagiarism amongst undergraduate students. Assess Eval High Educ 2008;33(5):465–79.
5. Hall J. Plagiarism across the curriculum: How academic communities can meet the challenge of the undocumented writer. Across Discipl 2005;2(9):1–11.
6. Giannopoulou E, Kokkinos D, Koulouris A, Triantafyllou I. Perception of plagiarism among undergraduate students in Greek Universities. J Integr Inf Manag 2021;6(2):13–20.
7. Ramzan M, Munir MA, Siddique N, Asif M. Awareness about plagiarism amongst university students in Pakistan. High Educ 2012;64:73–84.
8. Shirazi B, Jafarey AM, Moazam F. Plagiarism and the medical fraternity: a study of knowledge and attitudes. J Pak Med Assoc 2010;60(4):269.
9. Mansoor F, Ameen K, Arshad A. An exploratory study of university librarians’ perceptions on causes and deterrents of plagiarism: A Pakistani perspective. Glob Knowl Mem Commun 2022;71(6):510–25.
10. Rugira L. University students are plagiarising? Say it ain’t so. The New Times; 2017.
11. Rathore FA, Waqas A, Zia AM, Mavrinac M, Farooq F. Exploring the attitudes of medical faculty members and students in Pakistan towards plagiarism: a cross sectional survey. PeerJ 2015;3:e1031.
12. Ghajarzadeh M, Norouzi-Javidan A, Hassanpour K, Aramesh K, Emami-Razavi SH. Attitude toward plagiarism among Iranian medical faculty members. Acta Med Iran 2012;50(11):778–81.
13. Jereb E, Urh M, Jerebic J, Šprajc P. Gender differences and the awareness of plagiarism in higher education. Soc Psychol Educ. 2018 Apr;21:409–26.
14. Kaler M, Richter C, Scoville C, Szigeti S. The moral universe: A survey of undergraduate student attitudes towards plagiarism. Can Perspect Acad Integr 2023;6(1):1–15.
15. Zakirulla M, Alqahtani FM, Alshahrani FT, Khalid S, Alqahtani AA, Almalki AY, et al. Exploring the attitude of dental undergraduate students in Saudi Arabia towards plagiarism. J Res Med Dent Sci 2020;8(3):123–30.
16. Ehrich J, Howard SJ, Mu C, Bokosmaty S. A comparison of Chinese and Australian university students' attitudes towards plagiarism. Stud High Educ 2016;41(2):231–46.
17. Pupovac V, Bilic-Zulle L, Mavrinac M, Petrovecki M. Attitudes toward plagiarism among pharmacy and medical biochemistry students–cross-sectional survey study. Biochem Med (Zagreb) 2010;20(3):307–13.
18. Rajovic N, Pavlovic A, Olatunde D, Pavlovic V, Stanisavljevic D, Milic N. Attitudes toward plagiarism among PhD medical students in Serbia. Healthc Transform Inform Artif Intell 2023;305:184.
19. Pritchett S. Perceptions about plagiarism between faculty and undergraduate students. San Diego (CA): Alliant International University; 2010.
20. Romanowski MH. Preservice teachers’ perception of plagiarism: a case from a college of education. J Acad Ethics 2022;20(3):289–309.
21. Eret E, Ok A. Internet plagiarism in higher education: tendencies, triggering factors and reasons among teacher candidates. Assess Eval High Educ 2014;39(8):1002–16.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Zeelaf Shahid, Faryal Nawab , Syed Sanower Ali, Urooj Fatima
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Journal of Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad is an OPEN ACCESS JOURNAL which means that all content is FREELY available without charge to all users whether registered with the journal or not. The work published by J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad is licensed and distributed under the creative commons License CC BY ND Attribution-NoDerivs. Material printed in this journal is OPEN to access, and are FREE for use in academic and research work with proper citation. J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad accepts only original material for publication with the understanding that except for abstracts, no part of the data has been published or will be submitted for publication elsewhere before appearing in J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad. The Editorial Board of J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad makes every effort to ensure the accuracy and authenticity of material printed in J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad. However, conclusions and statements expressed are views of the authors and do not reflect the opinion/policy of J Ayub Med Coll Abbottabad or the Editorial Board.
USERS are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
AUTHORS retain the rights of free downloading/unlimited e-print of full text and sharing/disseminating the article without any restriction, by any means including twitter, scholarly collaboration networks such as ResearchGate, Academia.eu, and social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Scholar and any other professional or academic networking site.
