Plagiarism in Medical Sciences’ Publications in Iran: The Extent, Reasons, and Preventative Measures

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the main reasons behind plagiarism in medically-oriented articles and to determine its range. The study was conducted in two phases. The first phase tackled the frequency of its occurrence in publications of medically-oriented universities. To this end, a total of 23 ISI-indexed and 74 SCOPUS-indexed journals, with medically-oriented topics, were randomly selected from the portal of the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education. The selected journals were published within the last 5 years. Then, in the next step, two articles were randomly selected from each journal amounting to 194 articles. The selected articles were then checked by TURNITIN plagiarism detector software to specify their similarity index with three familiar sources: the internet, publications, and students’ papers. The results indicated the similarity index of 66.09 and 67.89 for the ISI and SCOPUS indexed journals respectively. The study, additionally, went further to delineate the researchers’ perceptions of plagiarism, intended for preventative purposes and subsequent preventative measures. Therefore, eight researchers, with 15 to 30 years of publication experience, were asked to take part in a semi-structured interview. Based on their assertions, insufficient language skills, lack of robust research ideas and skills, pressure for promotion or graduation, ineffective punitive measures, insufficient funding, and leakage of research ideas through collaborative clinical practice were the main reasons for committing plagiarism. The study proceeded with some remedial suggestions.