Ambiguity in Ethical Standards: Global Versus Local Science in Explaining Academic Plagiarism.
Sci Eng Ethics
; 30(1): 4, 2024 Feb 12.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38345671
ABSTRACT
The past decade has seen extensive research carried out on the systematic causes of research misconduct. Simultaneously, less attention has been paid to the variation in academic misconduct between research fields, as most empirical studies focus on one particular discipline. We propose that academic discipline is one of several systematic factors that might contribute to academic misbehavior. Drawing on a neo-institutional approach, we argue that in the developing countries, the norm of textual originality has not drawn equal support across different research fields depending on its level of internationalization. Using plagiarism detection software, we analyzed 2,405 doctoral dissertations randomly selected from all dissertations defended in Russia between 2007 and 2015. We measured the globalization of each academic discipline by calculating the share of publications indexed in the global citation database in relation to overall output. Our results showed that, with an average share of detected borrowings of over 19%, the incidence of plagiarism in Russia is remarkably higher than in Western countries. Overall, disciplines closely follow the pattern of higher globalization associated with a lower percentage of borrowed text. We also found that plagiarism is less prevalent at research-oriented institutions supporting global ethical standards. Our findings suggest that it might be misleading to measure the prevalence of academic misconduct in developing countries without paying attention to variations at the disciplinary level.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Plagio
/
Mala Conducta Científica
Tipo de estudio:
Risk_factors_studies
Aspecto:
Ethics
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Sci Eng Ethics
Asunto de la revista:
ETICA
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
Pais de publicación:
Reino Unido