This is regarding a disturbing trend that I am trying to come to terms with, in first hand. The title gives the context. Let me first describe a few instances that I had recent first hand experiences with, all involving, unfortunately, persons within our country.

Some days back my professor friend from an US university sent me an email asking me for a suggestion. One of the students of a reputed engineering institution in India has applied for summer internship to my friend’s university in the USA with a claim that he (the student) has published two research papers in ‘international conferences’ or whatever. My friend explored further on the contents of these ‘papers’ and found that they are verbatim copies of many sources including the Wikipedia. My friend sent a stern warning to the student and later consulted with me on how copyright law works in India and should he warn the institute to which the student belongs. In such instances what surprises me is the gumption on the student's part to try her/his luck, perhaps hoping that the document would only be glanced over.

Again, a few days back, for a journal that reports peer reviewed original research articles, I was doing a technical review of a paper written by Indian authors, at the behest of the journal editor. The paper contained a report of some experiments conducted (badly) and a theory section enunciating a theoretical procedure. The paper is supposed to compare the predictions of the theory with that of some (badly performed) experimental results. To cut a long story (of me wasting two days of my life doing the review of this paper) short, the theoretical analysis reported in this manuscript is a verbatim copy of a recent work reported in a reputed journal by someone else. After I got suspicious of the content of the reported work, it took me just ten minutes to locate the real source through a search in the appropriate online journal archives.

And it didn’t end there. More than three instances involving the same authors have been identified from various journal sources, of course, with dire consequences to the authors, with all of those papers summarily rejected with a note of strong caution from the editors of the concerned journals.

And on a higher scale and stature, we know of the recent cases of the South Korean scientist faking cloning research and the eventual infamy and stripping of all of his honors, a Bell Labs Scientist trying to project something that is not true and the fusion fiasco in the USA involving, again, an Indian. A recent one to be caught is reported in the Anatomy of a scientific fraud post by Abi at nanopolitan.

And once I started discussing this issue, my colleague shared his experience of having read about another Indian scientist reproducing an old, obscure paper, and had it published in a research journal. In another instance different from plagiarism but nevertheless has questionable ethics, one has witnessed several instances when a senior faculty insists that his/her name be added as an ‘n’th author of a paper because of minor helps received by the (n-1) authors while toiling for the paper (of course, the name should, nevertheless, be certainly mentioned in the Acknowledgment).

Of course, in the above instances, justice has been done. Action has been taken against the people at fault. So no permanent harm is done. Or is it?

Why are these people copying some body else’s work?

Some ready reasons could be poor research skills, low self esteem, low regard for the entire research and publication process, peer pressure that defines academic success in a skewed way and confusion about or complete ignorance of what amounts to plagiarism.

Plagiarism involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterward and hence is an act of fraud as clearly stated by Plagiarism.org, an online site devoted to increase public awareness of plagiarism especially in academic endeavors. According to the above website, all of the following are considered plagiarism: 1) turning in someone else’s work as your own; 2) failing to put a quotation in quotation marks; 3) copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit; 4) copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not; 5) changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit; 6) giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation. For instance, the ‘research paper’ instance detailed above is guilty of plagiarism under the reasons given in 1, 3, 4 and 6 above.

The logical end for academic research is usually a publication in a technical journal of repute. Although this is a much desired and a welcome result for all researchers, it is to be kept in mind as a secondary recognition. It is only a recognition of one’s work by peers (as reviewers and readers), while the much more important primary recognition of your work by your self and the associated happiness and confidence is while you did the work and there it ends.

The academic world, unfortunately, is now into the publish-or-perish mode. As a human instinct, we do not want to fail. So the weak mind succumbs to the lure. Unless this system of publish-or-perish, largely a secondary recognition activity, is rectified, we will hear more of these plagiarism stories in coming years.

A tempering option is the open source publications and open peer reviews recently tried by Nature, the science journal of repute. A radical suggestion but nevertheless one to be considered seriously is to completely abolish the importance or degree of weight given to papers published in all of the promotion qualifications of an academic scientist. This suggestion is not to be construed as one trying to stop research itself. Importance for graduating research students and successfully finishing externally funded research projects can still exist and can serve as promotion criteria. But, if one is to publish one’s research done in the above situations, then it should be out of and only for one’s personal interest.

Publishing in peer reviewed research journals is to be seen a personal academic duty of an academician, as a contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge rather as a means for (any) professional gains.

Spending enormous amount of time and earnest effort in the seeking of the primary recognition naturally yields the secondary recognition as a bonus. This is the only way one can become a successful researcher with conscience.

Further educators must take the responsibility of guiding one’s students of the perils of shortcuts to glory and about the numerous methods that exist nowadays to quickly find out about their misdeeds. After all, if a student or a fledgling researcher or academician can search the internet journal archives or Wikipedia, the editor or reviewer of a journal (who are well established scientists, in most cases) can as well do it, with much more efficiency and alacrity. In todays research world well connected by easy access of information, just as it is easy to plagiarize, it is that easy to find it. Just like there is a difference between studying and learning, students should know, else be made to realize, that there is difference between (internet) search and (academic) research.

While copying another person’s work indiscriminately (stealing!) could give one a short term success and a career, in the long term the person who resorts to this will realize (or will be made to realize) that he is a mere “hollow” moon of reflective glory, borrowing from the radiant Sun of honest creativity. An academic crook of the third degree; their soul is forever jailed inside their self constructed Hell.

Think for yourself. There is much happiness in it to be explored for a life time.