Scientific plagiarism - regulations and practice in Germany

Abstract

“Good scientific practice” became more and more relevant in recent times, because publicationsand academic titles are an important factor for careers and economic benefits. In order to achieve a sufficient level of publications, an increasing number of authors violate the rules of good scientific practice; reliable statistics are not available, but some universities report an astonishing increase of plagiarism. This phenomenon must also be seen in the context of today’s way of “measuring” scientific quality: the criteria “quantity” prevails. This article contains a presentation of criteria, which German administrative courts apply when assessing claims against the decision of universities on the deprivation of academic titles. At the first glance, it seems that the number of texts of another author is the main criteria for the decision, whethera scientific work is a plagiarism or not. But this criterion is only an indicator, the relevant criterion is, whether the author “systematically and in a planned way used other authors’ thoughts and ideas. As mentioned above, the quantity of publications is – unfortunately – the prevailing criterion for scientific quality. This leads to a complicated form of plagiarism, the “self-plagiarism”. From the legal point of view, an author can use his ideas and texts without limits. But due to the trend to focus on the number of publications, the self-plagiarism is considered as a violation of good scientific practice – but without the consequences, which are applied in case of real plagiarism. This core part of the article is framed with the description of the relevant norms of the German Constitution, of the intellectual property law, the laws of the Länder and statutes of universities. As an example, the statute of the university of Regensburg served for the description of the procedure of a university, when a suspect of plagiarism has been revealed.