Plagiarism in Non-Anglophone Countries: a Cross-sectional Survey of Researchers and Journal Editors

Recent times have seen a remarkable shift in the science of publishing. A greater worldwide connectivity has ushered in the era of digitalised medicine, with better connectivity, education, and awareness of the science of publication research.1, 2 In such times, access to scientific articles has also lent greater visibility, wider audience, and better understanding of the grey areas in research. While ethical publishing is of ultimate importance, researchers and journal editors, particularly those from non-Anglophone countries, often find themselves in a diversity of acceptable and unacceptable rules for publishing.3 While some aspects of publication ethics are well understood and globally acceptable, there are areas that lack certainty and clarity.4

Among the various violations of unethical writing, plagiarism is one of the most frequent and widely reported forms of violation.5, 6 The wider reach and internet-based penetrance and connectivity has lent greater visibility to even obscure forms of research, gifting researchers and the world with a scientific syncytium to build on a better foundation for science. In times of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, such evils carry much greater and amplified risks of replicating published research works.7 This may go a long way in disintegrating research credibility, amplifying misinformation.

While scientists worldwide would concur that plagiarism is a violation that deserves immediate, complete and deep uprootal, understanding certain aspects may lend them another perspective.8, 9 At the authors' end, cultural and linguistic barriers have been proposed to impact plagiarism in scholarly articles.3 Psychological (or personality type) impediments may be other potential contributor to unique scenarios for plagiarism. Parsing manuscripts into salami publications may be an additional setting wherein certain components of manuscript are copied or reproduced. On the other hand, journal editors may encounter financial hardships, limiting their access to advanced anti-plagiarism software.10

Understanding the context of plagiarism, grey areas, and acceptable writing norms assumes a central role to further timely action in this publishing domain.11 An improved awareness of intentional and unintentional forms of plagiarism might place researchers and journal editors in the right shoes for tackle this timeless violation.12 With the above mentioned in mind, we arranged this online survey to better understand perceptions of plagiarism in scholarly publishing among researchers and journals editors, particularly from non-Anglophone countries.

To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the largest e-surveys on plagiarism where nearly 45% of the respondents were associated with journal editing and reviewing, lending greater credibility to the academic observations. A variety of views in scholarly articles point to some uncertainties and poor understanding of ethical writing among scholars. This survey reiterated that despite improving global awareness on plagiarism, poor understanding still persists among non-Anglophone medical researchers. The basic tenets of plagiarism as copying texts and graphics are known to many, while other aspects entailing stealing of ideas and paraphrasing of the existing article is still considered to lie outside the boundaries of plagiarism; and hence may be the most commonly seen form of unethical writing practice.14

Conventionally plagiarism was viewed as a research misconduct, and it is still an ethical transgression that shatters the credibility of scholarly journals.15 The vast majority of the journal editors and other scholars who responded to our survey believe that the origin of plagiarism are rooted in outdated pre- and post-graduate education. Rote learning is widely publicized as the correct form of acquiring knowledge, and individualism is considered unwelcome in some academic societies.15 Moreover, the pressure to publish or perish is immense in non-meritorious systems which reward those successful in a rat race. Such instilled fret for research among medical students and inexperienced authors may give rise to a major population prone to plagiarize, since their knowledge and awareness about publication ethics, plagiarism and its consequences remain limited.4 These are conventional reasons for plagiarism, however recently there is emerging evidence of language, cultural, and social barriers being a major roadway to plagiarism.12 Since most instances of plagiarism may be unintentional, topical education may play a decisive role in curbing the issue and avoiding unnecessary post-publication discussions of poor writing and unethical behaviour by some researchers and authors.16 Along with poor understanding of publication ethics, limited access to proprietary tools and platforms for detecting plagiarism may be another major impediment to credible publishing, particularly in non-Anglophone countries. Despite the dire need to address these issues, there are uncertainties on the effective approaches to do so.

Landmark studies of MEDLINE/ PubMed-indexed articles have demonstrated that plagiarism is the reason for retraction in about 14.4–27% of cases.17, 18 There are only a few surveys that explore perceptions of plagiarism among scholars.5, 12 Notably, a cross-sectional survey of biomedical researchers in Europe and China was consistent with our finding of fair understanding about major forms of plagiarism, but uncertainties around the permissible extent of text copying.12 Furthermore, lack of time for writing was reported to be another major factors leading to plagiarism in some instances.10

Misunderstanding of the acceptable extent of plagiarism in scholarly articles is widespread, with less than 10% seems to be the threshold. However, a greater percentage of similarity is thought to be acceptable by some journal editors and authors. Several software such as PlagScan, iThenticate, and Grammarly have been designed to determine the overall and single-source similarity degrees. Unfortunately, such an advanced plagiarism detection and prevention approach is still unknown to some and inaccessible to other scholars.3, 6 This is highlighted in Fig. 1. The instructions for authors are also not always updated to guide how to avoid plagiarism in the journal submissions.19 Such deficiencies may confound the poor consensus among authors around the acceptable extent of copied words, phrases, or sentences, with or without citations.8 In this context, it is important to emphasize the differences between similarity (which is detected by outputs from automated software) and plagiarism. Mere similarity of any degree cannot be described as plagiarism. Similarity even lower than 10% can indicate plagiarism if a portion of the text was reproduced verbatim without due reference to the source. On the other hand, similarity of much greater degree might not be indicative of plagiarism if this was due to small commonly-used phrases being detected as similar throughout the manuscript. The extent of similarity detected on outputs from iThenticate or Turnitin depends on the limits of filters imposed on such scans. Speaking from personal experience, a limit of at least eight to ten words should be imposed to avoid detecting similarity of little actual relevance.20, 21

Fig. 1
Physicians and scholars' perception of plagiarism.

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The knowledge gap of 42% of our surveyees is indicated by their non-familiarity with the statements on plagiarism by the COPE, WAME, and other editorial associations. Those who (un)intentionally plagiarize are also unaware of the severe consequences that could follow this misconduct.

One global issue that has recently emerged is the overload of poorly validated documents, particularly preprints with plagiarized parts.22 It is generally not advisable to cite unpublished (preprint) works. However, the unique situation arising out of the ongoing pandemic has led to a massive rise in preprint platforms, lending journal editors another grey area to resolve.7 The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in indexing of COVID-19-related preprints on PubMed Central, further compounding the issue of duplicates.7 It is now mandatory that authors list all preprints and conference abstracts in their final publications to avoid duplication/plagiarism claims.

The question arises as to how journal editors should address the issue of plagiarism in scholarly articles, particularly in view of the possible overburdening of peer reviewers. The majority of our survey respondents thought that specifically designed (topical) courses on plagiarism detection and prevention might prove beneficial to fill the knowledge gap and address the grey areas that exist. Presumably, various training sessions covering types of plagiarism, degrees of copying, utilization of anti-plagiarism software along with legal regulations of research should be included as part of the curriculum in medical school.3, 6 Students can be mentored by experienced researchers ensuring adequate learning, particularly in non-Anglophone countries where courses of ethical writing and editing are non-existent.23 Social-media channels can also help in the process and can ensure online educations for a large population of scholars.

The majority of scholars believe that anti-plagiarism software can help curb the issue.3, 9 Regularly updated points on plagiarism in the journal instructions with specific statements on employing advanced anti-plagiarism software may guide the authors to carefully recheck their manuscripts prior to the submission and peer review.9, 19 The software checks should always be accompanied by manual checks.3 Academic institutions and publishers may provide access to advanced anti-plagiarism software for regular research audits and for ensuring quality publishing.21, 24, 25 A previous survey suggested variations between non-Anglophone editors and Anglophone editors with respect to global ethics recommendations for plagiarism. Given those variations, the need of the hour is to develop practical approaches based on opinion from global representatives to address the prevalent issue of plagiarism.25

We fully acknowledge the limitations caused by the short period of our survey and a relatively small sample size. Besides, knowing the number of indexed articles published by respondents in English could have provided further understanding of the respondent population. Having said that, we believe that those who commit plagiarism may do it at any stage of their academic career, regardless of the number of publications. We hope that unique insights from our survey would pave the way for a larger global study.

To conclude, great variation exists in the understanding of plagiarism among non-Anglophone authors, potentially contributing to unethical publications and even retractions. Bridging the knowledge gap by arranging topical education and widely employing advanced anti-plagiarism software may address this unmet need.