Treffer: Attitudes towards plagiarism among academics of the faculty of Medicine of Tunis.
Original Publication: New York : Gordon and Breach, 1989-
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Assessing the extent of plagiarism within academics remains the first step in the fight against this behavior. The current study aimed to explore the attitudes of the Faculty of Medicine of Tunis (FMT)'s academics toward plagiarism. A cross-sectional study was conducted within the FMT during the 2018-2019 academic year. Data were collected using a questionnaire including the English version of the attitudes toward plagiarism questionnaire (ATPQ) which is composed of 29 statements divided into three attitudinal factors: positive, negative attitudes and subjective norms toward plagiarism. A total of 340 faculty members responded to the survey. The mean scores for both positive attitudes (28.8 ± 6.9) and subjective norms (24.6 ± 4.9) were between low to moderate and that of negative attitudes was moderate (22.4 ± 2.6). In multivariate analysis, participants with higher academic rank, those who had a good level of English or who attended English courses and those who attended workshops in scientific writing were less tolerant toward plagiarism. The implementation of courses on research practices as well as the introduction of medical English courses in the FMT's post graduate program could constitute relevant approaches to limit the extent of plagiarism.
AN0146318552;7v601nov.20;2020Oct09.04:18;v2.2.500
Attitudes towards plagiarism among academics of the faculty of Medicine of Tunis
Assessing the extent of plagiarism within academics remains the first step in the fight against this behavior. The current study aimed to explore the attitudes of the Faculty of Medicine of Tunis (FMT)'s academics toward plagiarism. A cross-sectional study was conducted within the FMT during the 2018–2019 academic year. Data were collected using a questionnaire including the English version of the attitudes toward plagiarism questionnaire (ATPQ) which is composed of 29 statements divided into three attitudinal factors: positive, negative attitudes and subjective norms toward plagiarism. A total of 340 faculty members responded to the survey. The mean scores for both positive attitudes (28.8 ± 6.9) and subjective norms (24.6 ± 4.9) were between low to moderate and that of negative attitudes was moderate (22.4 ± 2.6). In multivariate analysis, participants with higher academic rank, those who had a good level of English or who attended English courses and those who attended workshops in scientific writing were less tolerant toward plagiarism. The implementation of courses on research practices as well as the introduction of medical English courses in the FMT's post graduate program could constitute relevant approaches to limit the extent of plagiarism.
Keywords: Plagiarism; attitude; academics; Tunisia
1. Introduction
Plagiarism means "the theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and the substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work" (ORI [25]). The work stolen is made up of: ideas, images, writings, formulas, data, research or other-form (Begovic [4]). Bergadaà ([5]) views plagiarism as a kind of spoliation not only of the plagiarized author but also of the audience by depriving it of the information necessary to find the original source to have a complete and contextualized vision. It constitutes, therefore, a derogation from the principles of ethics, and a serious form of misconduct that can harms the reputation of the scientific community and threatens the integrity of research.
Worldwide, plagiarism was identified as one of major types of scientific fraud causing articles' retractions in different fields including medicine (Cokol, Ozbay, and Rodriguez‐Esteban [7]; Stretton et al. [32]; Wang et al. [34]). In fact, 11% of papers submitted to the CMJ (Croatian Medical journal) between 2009 and 2010 have been plagiarized (Baždarić et al. [3]). This was also the case of 17% of the 400 consecutively submitted manuscripts to GIM, the official journal of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics, from March 2013 to April 2014 (Higgins, Lin, and Evans [12]). The majority of plagiarized manuscripts (82%) were submitted from countries where English was not an official language (Higgins, Lin, and Evans [12]).
The practice of plagiarism is very common among Tunisian researchers also. Indeed, a study conducted in 2014 by Amos ([2]) found that out of 20 nations with 5 or more retracted papers published between 2008 and 2012, Tunisia had the 4th highest retraction rate for plagiarism and the third highest one for duplicate publications.
Other Tunisian cases of plagiarism, mainly in the medical field, have been reported as well, for example, a group of Tunisian researchers have been banned from publishing in The Indian Journal of Dermatology because of submission of two plagiarized papers (Foster and Chopra [10]). Similarly, some cancer researchers were accused of stealing liberally both text and data from other authors work (Marcus [21]). Such acts are susceptible to infringing the reputation of the Tunisian scientists, cast doubt on the originality of their works and may even deter some editors from accepting Tunisian articles. Moreover, within academic, plagiarism goes against the program of accreditation undertaken by some Tunisian institutions in order to reach international academic standards. The Faculty of Medicine of Tunis (FMT), involved in this process of accreditation for the purpose of a universal recognition of its diplomas, should pay particular attention to the issue of plagiarism. Determining the extent of this phenomenon within the teaching community is the first step to undertake in the fight against this unethical behavior. Hence, the current study conducted in the FMT aimed to explore the attitudes of its faculty members toward plagiarism.
2. Materials and methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted within the FMT, during the 2018–2019 academic year, over a three-month period. The study took place under the auspices of the theses and dissertations committee of the FMT after obtaining ethical approval from the ethical committee of the aforementioned university.
The population study included all FMT's faculty members that have e-mail address subscribed in the mailing list of the university.
Data were collected using a two-part questionnaire; (i) participant's demographic characteristics and professional information (ii) the English version of the Attitudes toward plagiarism questionnaire (ATPQ) which was developed, tested and validated by Mavrinac et al. ([22]).
The ATPQ is composed of 29 statements divided into 3 attitudinal factors: positive, negative attitudes and subjective norms toward plagiarism. The first factor includes 12 statements and mirrors acceptance of plagiarism. This factor mainly focuses on actions done by participants. The second one, measured by seven items, reflects disapproval of such behavior and essentially describes actions done by others. The third factor contains 10 statements and determines personal evaluation of the prevalence and the social acceptance of plagiarism (Mavrinac et al. [22]; Pupovac et al. [27]). Responses for each question were rated on a 5 point likert scale (1: strongly disagree, 2: disagree, 3: neither agree nor disagree, 4: agree, 5: strongly agree).
The questionnaire was created under Google forms and an e-mail invitation with the URL link to the electronic survey was sent to all potential participants. The e-mail sent included also a brief description of the study and an estimation of the time needed to answer the questionnaire.
The link was accessible online from November 2018 to January 2019. During this period, two reminders were sent, one month part, the first time they have received the initial invitation, in order to increase the response rate. Participants were asked to complete and submit the survey only once to avoid duplicates. They answered the questionnaire anonymously and willingly.
As French is our second language, we joined a French version of the questionnaire with the English one for a better understanding.
Data generated from completed forms were imported to Epi info<sups>TM</sups> 7 for statistical analysis.
Categorical variables were summarized in terms of percentages. For the ATPQ, we summed up points assigned to each question conforming to the 5 point likert scale. Then, we calculated an average score and its standard deviation (SD) for each of the 3 parts of the ATPQ that was subsequently ranged into low, moderate, and high range score (Table 1) (Mavrinac et al. [22]; Pupovac et al. [27]; Kattan et al. [13]). Low score (12–28) in positive attitudes section and high score (27–35) in negative attitudes one reflect low tolerance regarding plagiarism and low score in subjective norms toward plagiarism (10–23) indicates social disapproval of such behavior in society (Pupovac et al. [27]).
Table 1. Scores ranges for the three attitudinal factors of the Attitudes Toward Plagiarism Questionnaire.
1 *Favorable attitude toward plagiarism
2 **Unfavorable attitude toward plagiarism.
In order to determine factors associated with attitudes of faculty members toward plagiarism, the Student's t-test and Anova test in bivariate analysis and multiple linear regression in multivariate analysis were used.
A p-value under 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
3. Results
A total of 340 faculty members responded to the survey giving a response rate of 28.3%. The characteristics of the respondents are presented in (Table 2), most of whom were females giving a sex ratio of 2.4. University Hospital Doctors represented the majority of respondents (98.5%) and one quarter were professors. Only 26.5% of the respondents perceived their level in English proficiency as good and about 80% of them had attended a scientific writing course.
Table 2. Characteristics of study respondents (n = 340).
The answers for each question of the ATPQ are detailed in Table 3. Cronbach's alpha coefficient measuring the internal consistency of the 29 items of the ATPQ was 0.8.
Table 3. Responses to the 29 statements of the Attitudes toward plagiarism questionnaire (n = 340).
3 SD: strongly disagree, D: disagree, NAND: neither agree nor disagree, A: agree, SA: strongly agree.
The mean scores for the positive attitudes, negative attitudes and subjective norms toward plagiarism were 28.8 ± 6.9, 22.4 ± 2.6 and 24.6 ± 4.9 respectively. The average scores for both positive and subjective norms were found to be between low and moderate and that of the negative attitude was moderate.
Mean scores of the three attitudinal factors were compared according to participants' characteristics as presented in Table 4. No significant association was found between the three attitudes scores and sex or the academic discipline, whereas older respondents or those with higher academic rank had significantly lower positive attitude and subjective norms scores and higher negative attitude score. In addition, lower positive attitude and higher negative attitude toward plagiarism were observed among those with more years of work experience, and who published more papers or supervised more theses. Respondents with a good level of English or who had attended English courses or workshops related to scientific writing had a significantly less positive attitude and subjective norms toward plagiarism than their counterparts.
Table 4. Comparison of the three attitudinal factors' scores according to respondents' characteristics.
4 PATP: Positive Attitudes Toward Plagiarism, NATP: Negative Attitudes Toward Plagiarism, SN: Subjective Norms, NS: non-statistically significant, SD: Standard Deviation.
As showed in Tables 5–7, multivariate analysis revealed that participants with higher academic rank had significantly lower positive attitude and subjective norms scores and higher negative attitude score. English proficiency was significantly associated with lower positive attitudes and subjective norms scores (Tables 6 and 7). Respondents who attended English courses or workshops related to scientific writing had significantly lower subjective norms scores (Table 7).
Table 5. Prediction Model for Score of negative attitudes toward plagiarism through Multiple Linear Regression.
5 *Reference group.
Table 6. Prediction Model for Score of positive attitudes toward plagiarism through Multiple Linear Regression.
6 *Reference group.
Table 7. Prediction Model for Score of subjective norms toward plagiarism through Multiple Linear Regression.
7 *Reference group.
4. Discussion
This online survey explored the positions and attitudes among teacher-researchers of FMT regarding plagiarism and the factors influencing them using the ATPQ (Mavrinac et al. [22]). The scores of the three dimensions of the ATPQ were low to moderate for those relating to positive attitude and subjective norms to plagiarism and moderate for the negative attitude score. A statistically significant association was observed for the different attitudes scores in relation to the academic grade. English proficiency was significantly associated with lower positive attitudes and subjective norms scores.
We found that the score of positive attitude, essentially describing procedures done by oneself, was low to moderate reflecting a rather unfavorable attitude toward plagiarism and that the score of negative attitude referring mainly to actions done by others was moderate. Faculty members seem thus more incline to accept plagiarism if committed by others than by themselves. Such results are similar to those observed in a study conducted among online nursing students (Quartuccio [28]) but in contrast with those of Pupovac et al. ([27]), who found that Croatian pharmacy and medical students were more strict when plagiarism was done by others than by themselves.
Consistent with previous studies (Gomez, Nagesh, and Sujatha [11]; Kumari et al. [16]), the score for the negative attitude factor reflects lack of clear attitudes of Tunisian academics regarding plagiarism, mainly if it is committed by others. Such result may be explained by the notion of group solidarity. Indeed, reporting colleagues' misconduct can create tension between peers and lead to exclusion from the group (McCabe, Trevino, and Butterfield [23]; Quartuccio [28]). In addition, faculty members can project their convictions on others (Quartuccio [28]). For instance, if they think that plagiarism enable researchers to write and publish more articles, they will be more tolerant toward those who plagiarize.
The low to moderate score in subjective norms toward plagiarism reflect a tendency to disapprove such behavior in society. The future use of plagiarism detection software in the FMT may lead to think that plagiarism is unacceptable in this academic institution and that it is considered as a violation of faculty ethics.
Although almost 90% of participants disagreed that they
Regarding plagiarism justifications, having short deadlines, a language barrier or more important tasks to do were not considered as excuses for committing plagiarism according to majority of participating faculty members. Moreover, only 11.2% of respondents agreed with the fact that
Plagiarism can take several forms, the gravity of which varies according to circumstances and does not always represent a reprehensible conduct, but in all cases it is ethically unacceptable. Plagiarism does not affect generally the validity of reported results and conclusions but it is considered by the European code of conduct for research integrity as a serious violation of research integrity like fabrication and falsification (All European Academies [1]). Plagiarism differs from copyright infringement. Indeed, plagiarism consists in the "use or reuse of words or ideas without acknowledgment". It is an ethical issue and is considered as a violation of community norms. Whereas, copyright infringement is a law issue and consists in the use of other people works, that are protected by copyright law, without permission regardless of whether the original work was cited or not (Eisner and Vicinus [9]; Sengupta [30]). In the present study, most of respondents were aware of the gravity and the detrimental impact of plagiarism. In fact, 85.9% were convinced that plagiarism impoverishes the investigation spirit and nearly two third considered plagiarism as bad as stealing an exam. Plagiarism could take several forms: it can be explicit (assign someone to write in their name) or implicit (ignore the true author), intentional or unintentional (Leduc [17]). Intentional forms include mosaic or paraphrase plagiarism, appropriation of research results, theft of ideas, plagiarism of published texts, and self-plagiarism where the author is the plagiarist of his own work (Luksanapruksa and Millhouse [20]). Our surveyed academics seem to be more tolerant toward this latter form of plagiarism. In fact, more than half (53.6%) agreed that
While assessing factors influencing ATPQ scores in multivariate analysis, we found those with higher academic degree had significantly lower PAP and SNP scores and higher NAP score. These outcomes are consistent with those of Poorolajal et al. ([26]) who found that Professors are less tolerant regarding plagiarism than associate and assistant Professors. Furthermore, we found that faculty members who had participated in training courses on scientific writing had significantly lower scores in subjective norms than those who did not receive such training. In fact, lack of practice and training on the basics of scientific redaction lead to meager writing skills which constitutes one of plagiarism causes (Mohammed et al. [24]).
In the present study, faculty members with a self-estimated good English level were less tolerant toward plagiarism than their counterparts. Indeed, insufficient writing skills in English may be a cause for some authors to plagiarize in order to avert rejection of their papers (Shashok [31]).
It is important to implement regular courses and workshops on ethical practices in research, emphasizing on plagiarism and its different types, since first years of medical education (Rathore et al. [29]) as well as the introduction of medical English courses in the FMT's post graduate program. Academic institutions must also be careful to instill the basics of scientific writing since the early academic years. Besides that, implementing strict academic policies and penalties against plagiarism may raise awareness about the importance of such subject and deter either academics or students from such unethical practice.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of its type not only in Tunisia but in North Africa, addressing attitudes toward plagiarism among Medical Faculty Members and using a questionnaire created under Google forms and sent via e-mail to all academics. This approach made it possible to reach all faculty members at a low cost (Watt [35]; Braithwaite et al. [6]). At the same time, care was taken not to collect any information that would allow for direct identification of respondents. Therefore, on such a sensitive and delicate subject as plagiarism, this process makes the respondents feel comfortable and encourages them to respond honestly and sincerely. Whereas, the most important issue arising from web based surveys is lack of data representativeness (Watt [35]; Braithwaite et al. [6]). In fact, low response rate in the present study may interfere with the representativeness of our findings. In addition, we have not been able to compare the respondents' characteristics to those of the target population due to the unavailability of these up-to-date information. However, our response rate is largely higher than that reported in a previous Tunisian study assessing university hospital doctors' knowledge regarding plagiarism (Khemiss et al. [14]) and similar to those reported in other studies conducted among physicians (Tambor et al. [33]; Cunningham et al. [8]). Although we assessed factors influencing the three attitudinal scores toward plagiarism, the cross-sectional study design does not allow inferring causal relationships between these factors and attitudes regarding plagiarism. This could be considered as a second limitation of our study.
5. Conclusions
The present study showed a general tendency of FMT's academics to have unfavorable attitudes regarding plagiarism. Since the FMT plan to introduce a plagiarism checker software (Urkund) within the theses and dissertations committee in the 2020–2021 academic year, it would be interesting to use this software, in further studies, to assess the extent of plagiarism within the academic community and to check the consistency between attitudes and practices.
Acknowledgments
We thank the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Tunis, the directorate of studies and the theses and dissertations committee of the Faculty for supporting this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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