Intellectual theft: pitfalls and consequences of plagiarism

Abstract

Publishing fraudulent data and presenting ideas attributed to other researchers without appropriate recognition violates scientific ethics (Gross 2016). Falsifying data is a serious transgression because it is always intentional and thoroughly undermines the scientific enterprise. Is plagiarism equally offensive misconduct? As Editors-in-Chief of Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, we address concerns of plagiarism raised by Associate Editors and/or ad hoc referees. This is a highly significant issue because publications are the Bultimate product of research and their citation is often used to assess success and impact in a discipline; Researchers .... rely on their predecessors, while the extent of use of one scientist’s work, as a source for the work of other authors, is the verification of its contributions to the growth of human knowledge^ (Masic 2012). Clearly, BScience depends on trust, credit, and attribution^ (Anonymous 2009a). Yet a recent analysis reports that 30 % of polled scientists are aware of instances of plagiarism committed by colleagues (Pupovac and Fanelli 2015). What influences authors to manipulate sources of information and break such an important law of our global research community? Although plagiarism might be defined in terms of the minimal number of words used consecutively in a sentence, it is not restricted to verbatim copying. The precise nature of professional misconduct comprising plagiarism has been debated in respect to authorship and credit (Anonymous 2009b). For Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, plagiarism is welldefined in the instructions for manuscript preparation under the category of BEthical responsibilities of authors^: