Exploring scientific misconduct in Morocco based on an analysis of plagiarism perception in a cohort of 1,220 researchers and students

ABSTRACT

Plagiarism is widely regarded as an issue of low- and middle-income countries because of several factors such as the lack of ethics policy and poor research training. In Morocco, plagiarism and its perception by academics has not been investigated on a large scale. In this study, we evaluated different aspects of plagiarism among scholars based on a 23-question cross-sectional survey. Factors associated with plagiarism were explored using contingency tables and logistic regression. The survey results covered all public universities (n=12) and included 1,220 recorded responses. The academic level was significantly associated with plagiarism (p<0.001). Having publication records was statistically associated with a reduced plagiarism (p=0.002). Notably, the ability of participants to correctly define plagiarism was also significantly associated with a reduced plagiarism misconduct (p<0.001). Unintentional plagiarism (p<0.001), time constraint to write an original text (p<0.001), and inability of participants to paraphrase (p<0.001) were associated factors with plagiarism. Moreover, participants that considered plagiarism as a serious issue in academic research had significantly committed less plagiarism (p<0.001). The current study showed that various actionable factors associated with plagiarism can be targeted by educational interventions, and therefore, it provided the rationale to build training programs on research integrity in Morocco.

KEYWORDS:

• Plagiarism
• scientific integrity
• research misconduct
• Morocco

Acknowledgments

The contents of this paper reflect the authors’ perspectives and not of their institutions of affiliation. For transparency and research ethics purposes, the plagiarism report using Turnitin® software was shared publicly and can be found in Supplemental Material 3.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contribution

KE and Prof. MF developed the project idea and collected data. KE analyzed data and wrote the manuscript. Profs. NEK and MF appraised the manuscript writing and provided critical feedback on the manuscript content. The final draft was reviewed and approved by all the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2022.2110866

Additional information

Funding

The investigators of this study did not receive any funding neither from industry nor from academic institutions.