Table of Contents  
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Year : 2015  |  Volume : 8  |  Issue : 5  |  Page : 681-682  

Principles and practice of plagiarism: Perpetrators' perspective


Department of Pathology, Dr. D.Y. Patil Medical College, Hospital and Research Center, Pimpri, Pune, Maharashtra, India

Date of Web Publication10-Sep-2015

Correspondence Address:
M Banyameen Iqbal
Department of Pathology, Dr. D.Y. Patil Medical College, Hospital and Research Center, Pimpri, Pune - 411018, Maharashtra
India
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Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None


DOI: 10.4103/0975-2870.164941

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How to cite this article:
Iqbal M B, Kambale T. Principles and practice of plagiarism: Perpetrators' perspective. Med J DY Patil Univ 2015;8:681-2

How to cite this URL:
Iqbal M B, Kambale T. Principles and practice of plagiarism: Perpetrators' perspective. Med J DY Patil Univ [serial online] 2015 [cited 2024 Mar 29];8:681-2. Available from: https://journals.lww.com/mjdy/pages/default.aspx/text.asp?2015/8/5/681/164941

Sir,

In view of the editorial written by you in MJDYPU, March to April 2015, volume 8, issue 2 "Principles and practice of plagiarism: Perpetrator's perspective." We tend to differ slightly to the views put forward by the respected author like "crime and/or stealing."[1] We want to humbly put forward our point that plagiarism and originality are separated by a very thin line. By what we know about the definition of plagiarism it states, "Wrongful appropriation, stealing and publication of another author's language, thoughts, ideas or expressions, and the representation of them as one's own original work."[2] Our reason to believe otherwise is that although the author takes the material from some other source but the author always puts a reference in favor of his statement as to where from he has taken it; had it been otherwise and the author would not have mentioned any reference and made the statement look like his own, now that would mount for stealing, plagiarism or a crime.

As I have already mentioned in my previous letter to editor "Coping with academic anarchy: An appeal to reviewers, authors, and readers to raise the bar" published in the same issue, that these days it's an eligibility criterion for all the postgraduate students to publish an article just in order to be eligible to sit in the examination. There is a race for publication by these young students/authors, and they do not know or they do not care about this serious issue of plagiarism, as has been rightly stated by you in your previous editorial the policy of "Publish or perish."[3] Now the question is where lies the fault? This query raised by us in this article is debatable and open for discussion. Our answer to it would be that it's the responsibility of senior authors, guides, mentors, and reviewers, who are well aware of this menace of plagiarism, to educate these young authors and make them aware of this nuisance and encourage them to shun this practice, if at all they are involved in it. In doing so, we should keep in mind an important thing that is, that we should try not to discourage these young authors as this will affect the main purpose of research and subsequent publications. If we discourage them, they will no more be interested in research and will not publishing their work whatsoever, which on the other hand will be very harmful for the research fraternity in general and publications in particular.

A point well taken from your article is that of duplicate publications. We all are well aware of the fact that this practice should be strictly discouraged and condemned upon. Once again the fault lies in the fact that these authors are not aware of the fact that duplicate publications or to send one article in more than one journal at a time is not allowed, here again the onus lies on the senior authors or mentors who should educate them about the publication protocols. If at all this happens one has to be bold enough to withdraw the article and to make an apology, otherwise the reviewers/editors will have to take a strict action in the form of retraction or even blacklisting that particular author, which definitely will not be in a good taste for the authors reputation, as has happened in this very journal some issues back in which an article was retracted because of duplicate publication.

The issue of predatory journals taken up by the author is again a serious concern and it, on the other hand, increases the menace of plagiarism. The reason for this being that the so-called "predatory journals" publish the articles quickly without making a proper check for plagiarism only because one has to pay for his article to get published. On the other hand, standard journals take a lot of time for peer reviewing, which may extend even up to years and that is the reason why these new authors prefer these predatory journals rather than standard journals in order to get their articles published quickly without any proper peer review or plagiarism checking.

What we think as young authors is that, there is a need to make a body, which is properly functional and unbiased, if not one already present, which controls these journals and checks for their standard regularly in order to cut this menace of plagiarism and to raise the standard of publications. Coming on to the last point made by the author as said by Dr. Wager "don't go to a university that hasn't had at least one person fired for misconduct", we highly agree with this comment made by the author and also the editor of this journal for highlighting it.

To end this discussion on a high note, with high praise to the editor we want to congratulate him for retracting a duplicate publication in one of the earlier issues and also for providing some good links about plagiarism, they were really helpful.

 
  References Top

1.
Banerjee A. Principles and practice of plagiarism: Perpetrators' perspective. Med J DY Patil Univ 2015;8:127-8.  Back to cited text no. 1
  Medknow Journal  
2.
Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary: Gtd. In: Vera S, Nelson RS, editors. Library Plagiarism Policies. Italy: Association of College and Research Libraries; 2007. p. 65.  Back to cited text no. 2
    
3.
Banerjee A. Coping with academic anarchy: An appeal to reviewers, authors and readers to raise the bar. Med J DY Patil Univ 2014;7:541-2.  Back to cited text no. 3
  Medknow Journal  



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1 Giving credit where credit is due, plagiarism or not
Banyameen Iqbal, Iqra Mushtaq, Tushar Kambale
Medical Journal of Dr. D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth. 2023; 16(8): 323
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