Plagiarism in medical scientific research

Abstract

Plagiarism is defined as “the practice of taking someone else's words, work or ideas and passing them off as one's own”. It is probably the most common form of scientific dishonesty found in research articles. The aim of this review is to present a comprehensive account about plagiarism to raise awareness of all aspects of plagiarism. The key words “plagiarism”, “types”, “detection” and “consequences” were used to retrieve articles from the MEDLINE database. About five hundred articles were retrieved. Articles were divided into subgroups, with each group covering an aspect of plagiarism. Main findings and updates were summarized for each topic. The main reason behind plagiarism was found to be a lack of knowledge about the subject. When coupled with insufficient time, immature writing skills and the pressure on researchers to get their work published in good journals, authors take unacknowledged pieces of others' work and commit plagiarism. In the past, it was difficult to detect plagiarism; however, in recent years, many plagiarism-detection services and software programs have become available. The present article details how journals use these services and software as a helpful tool to check for plagiarism in submitted manuscripts. Within academia, plagiarism is an offense that can be devastating. Plagiarism is the most common problem in research writing. The cornerstone in preventing this problem from getting worse is to raise awareness about how to cope with this growing problem of research misconduct.

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