PLAGIARISM IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Assalamualaikum wr. wb.

Peace be upon you

Good morning ladies and gentlemen,

Hi! My name is Dinda Nurmala, I am an English literature student, from Faculty of Letters and Cultures at Gunadarma University. Allow me to convey few things about plagiarism on scientific research.

Before starting to discuss that, let me thank to Allah SwT. for all the blessings and time that is still being given until now.

First of all, let's pray and thank to our god Allah SWT, the lord of this world who has been giving us mercies that we cannot count.

Secondly, may sholawat and salam always be with our best prophet Muhammad SAW, who has guided us to know and do the right thing to live in this world namely Islam, the religion which guides mercy to all worlds.

Nowadays, many people from various circles in society do plagiarism. The sophistication of the technology which grow rapidly also relate to that issue. It can be done intentionally or not. The internet also can be accessed easily and then the “copy-paste” activities are common among the public without including the source of the link which article or some sentences are taken.

Now let’s define plagiarism. According to an Oxford dictionary, plagiarism is an act of plagiarizing something. Plagiarize is to copy another person’s ideas, words or work and pretend that they are your own.

According to www.bowdoin.edu, it explains there are several types of plagiarism and all are serious violations of academic honesty. First is direct plagiarism. It is the word-for-word transcription of a section of someone else’s work, without attribution and without quotation marks. The deliberate plagiarism of someone else's work is unethical, academically dishonest, and grounds for disciplinary actions, including expulsion.

The second is self-plagiarism. Self-plagiarism occurs when a student submits his or her own previous work, or mixes parts of previous works, without permission from all professors involved. For example, it would be unacceptable to incorporate part of a term paper you wrote in high school into a paper assigned in a college course. Self-plagiarism also applies to submitting the same piece of work for assignments in different classes without previous permission from both professors.

Next is mosaic plagiarism. It occurs when a student borrows phrases from a source without using quotation marks, or finds synonyms for the author’s language while keeping to the same general structure and meaning of the original. Sometimes called “patch writing,” this kind of paraphrasing, whether intentional or not, is academically dishonest and punishable.

The last is accidental plagiarism. Accidental plagiarism occurs when a person neglects to cite their sources, or misquotes their sources, or unintentionally paraphrases a source by using similar words, groups of words, and/or sentence structure without attribution. Students must learn how to cite their sources and to take careful and accurate notes when doing research. Lack of intent does not absolve the student of responsibility for plagiarism. Cases of accidental plagiarism are taken as seriously as any other plagiarism and are subject to the same range of consequences as other types of plagiarism.

Moreover, this case is sometimes found among Student College. Many students complete their assignments or write their thesis by taking several words or ideas from other people without quotations. This is based on the desire to complete tasks quickly without thinking about the bad thing of doing plagiarism.

But this is not necessarily the reason why they do plagiarism. Sometimes, there are also many people who do not understand how to quote someone's work or writing or even more fatal is that they do not know that what they are doing is plagiarism and they do not understand the bad activities so they continue to do so.

Karanam Gowrinath, Professor of Pulmonary medicine, in his journal about plagiarism said that plagiarism is one of the ways of scientific misconduct; others being fabrication, falsification and ghost writing. Plagiarism is defined as “deliberate or reckless use of someone else’s thoughts, words or ideas as one’s own without clear attribution of their source.

Then he explains some reasons why scientific misconduct occurs. First is because of human nature (Desire for status, power and fame without ability to do research in a proper way). Then the second is hectic competition, undue pressure for better results and lack of proper supervision at work place. For example are Publish or perish culture.

A good scientific research, journal, or article has high quality. It means that the content within those original works have the proper data sources with clearly defined research goals, method of operation which are acceptable for question included in the study. Guidelines for genuine scientific research should be designed based on real results. The original scientific research can be only one, and plagiarism is stolen copy. Nowadays the problem of plagiarism has become huge, or widespread and present in almost all spheres of human being, particularly in science. Plagiarism leads to incorrect result. Scientific universities or institutions should have a centre for security of quality security. 

Most people around us don’t intentionally commit plagiarism. Usually, it results from procrastination. It is important to have a sufficient time to complete your assignment. When using sources, you should get in the habit of citing them in full as you write. We can write the page numbers, making footnotes, or making a works cited page or bibliography after you have finished writing.

The other reason they do plagiarism is because citation errors. Common errors that lead to accidental plagiarism include using words or passages from the original source without using quotation marks or without citing the source. It can be using different citation formats within the same assignment or using a citation format incorrectly.

I suppose and I know everyone will agree that plagiarism in this era is literally a damage activity. Can you imagine your works or ideas or anything that you own is copied or stolen with someone without permission? It is not good. This era is hard to get something instant. Everything needs process. Meanwhile, in fact many Indonesian people, particularly student only reach the instant result without improve the process. Don’t be a plagiarist. It is not cool at all. Once you do that, you will looked and feel as a dumb person.

This is the end of my speech. I hope it is useful for you all and we can take a good lesson from what I deliver. I really hope that we can care of the original and authentic works. Because the good works have the good effect to our quality, particularly as Student College. I ask forgiveness for any words and behave which are not supposed to be. Thank you for the occasion and your kind attention. 

Wassalamualaikum Wr. Wb.