Understanding Plagiarism and Maintaining Research Integrity through Ethics

Abstract

Recently, some eminent personalities of prestigious institutes of national importance of India have drawn the attention of all scientific community as they were accused of either form of plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined by Office of the Research Integrity as “The theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and the substantial unattributed textual copying of another’s work.” Understanding the savories of the problem, watchdog of plagiarism in India, i.e., Society of Scientific Value (SSV) demanded that India urgently needs an independent ethics body with sufficient legal powers to enforce integrity in Indian science. The present paper reviews various forms of plagiarism, its causes and remedies to prevent plagiarism. Some recent case studies, especially in Indian context, have been discussed. The role of ethical values and committees to mitigate plagiarism has been depicted. We hope that scientific community will understand the value of ethics and avoid plagiarism in life and work.

 Keywords: Plagiarism, ethics, scientific misconduct, animal and human ethics committees, SSV