Abstract
Objective. The objective of this survey was to explore the attitudes towards plagiarism of faculty members and medical students in Pakistan.Methods. The Attitudes Toward Plagiarism questionnaire (ATP) was modified and distributed among 550 medical students and 130 faculty members in 7 medical colleges of Lahore and Rawalpindi. Data was entered in the SPSS v.20 and descriptive statistics were analyzed. The questionnaire was validated by principal axis factoring analysis.Results. Response rate was 93% and 73%, respectively. Principal axis factoring analysis confirmed one factor structure of ATP in the present sample. It had an acceptable Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.73. There were 421 medical students (218 (52%) female, 46% 3rd year MBBS students, mean age of 20.93 ± 1.4 years) and 95 faculty members (54.7% female, mean age 34.5 ± 8.9 years). One fifth of the students (19.7%) trained in medical writing (19.7%), research ethics (25.2%) or were currently involved in medical writing (17.6%). Most of the faculty members were demonstrators (66) or assistant professors (20) with work experience between 1 and 10 years. Most of them had trained in medical writing (68), research ethics (64) and were currently involved in medical writing (64). Medical students and faculty members had a mean score of 43.21 (7.1) and 48.4 (5.9) respectively on ATP. Most of the respondents did not consider that they worked in a plagiarism free environment and reported that self-plagiarism should not be punishable in the same way as plagiarism. Opinion regarding leniency in punishment of younger researchers who were just learning medical writing was divided.Conclusions. The general attitudes of Pakistani medical faculty members and medical students as assessed by ATP were positive. We propose training in medical writing and research ethics as part of the under and post graduate medical curriculum.
Highlights
Plagiarism is defined as “the deliberate or reckless use of someone else’s thoughts, words or ideas as one’s own, without clear attribution of their source” (Mason, 2009)
The obtained factor represents an overall attitude towards plagiarism consisting of positive attitudes, negative attitude and subjective norms
Lower scores on Attitudes Toward Plagiarism questionnaire (ATP) in medical students were associated with training in medical writing whereas ATP scores were not significantly associated with formal education in research ethics or current involvement in medical writing
Summary
Plagiarism is defined as “the deliberate or reckless use of someone else’s thoughts, words or ideas as one’s own, without clear attribution of their source” (Mason, 2009). Com/) is a blog which documents plagiarism, fabrication and retractions in the scientific community It mentions a high number of research articles based on fake data, image manipulation, self-plagiarism, fake peer reviews and disputed authorships that are being retracted frequently from reputable journals (Marcus & Oransky, 2014). This misconduct involves novice researchers, doctorate and post doc scholars from middle income countries and scientists and institutes from Europe, Americas and Japan enjoying international fame and prestige. Plagiarizing research work often leads to great setbacks in one’s careers
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