Perceptions of plagiarism in the use of other authors' language

Abstract

Background and objectives: Some authors do not place quotation marks around words used verbatim from another source. The purpose of this study was to determine if physician faculty, English faculty, editors, and medical students would: 1) consider it plagiarism to use selected samples of verbatim or paraphrased text from a published medical journal article (without quotation marks but with citation of the original work) and 2) consider this an important type of plagiarism.

Methods: A questionnaire was circulated to medical school faculty, English faculty, health care and non-health care editors, and medical students. Respondents compared writing samples with an original article and determined if any samples displayed plagiarism. (All samples were plagiarism according to published guidelines).

Results: The majority of physicians did not perceive any of the samples as being plagiarism and did not consider this type of plagiarism important. The reverse was true of the majority of medical students, English faculty, and nonphysician editors.

Conclusions: While perceptions varied widely within and among all groups studied, some physician faculty members and many other publishing professionals and medical students regard the use of verbatim text from another author without quotation marks as a serious form of plagiarism.