SynthesisScience and engineering ethics2015
Scientists Admitting to Plagiarism: A Meta-analysis of Surveys.
Synthesis in Science and engineering ethics, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Honorary authorship is highly prevalent in health sciences: systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys.Scientific reports · 2024Pooled it
- Prevalence of Research Misconduct and Questionable Research Practices: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Science and engineering ethics · 2021Pooled it
- How do PhD candidates perceive good research practices in the Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity?Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Questionable Research Practices: A Principled Classification and Ranking Based on Survey Data.Science and engineering ethics · 2026Article
- Research integrity in Spain: Great expectations, mediocre results.Accountability in research · 2026Article
- Aligning Scientific Values and Research Integrity: A Study of Researchers' Perceptions and Practices in Four Countries.Science and engineering ethics · 2025Article
- Are questionable research practices considered a successful career strategy? A novel implementation of the implicit association test.Scientometrics · 2025Article
- Investigating the links between questionable research practices, scientific norms and organisational culture.Research integrity and peer review · 2024Article
- Article
- Ambiguity in Ethical Standards: Global Versus Local Science in Explaining Academic Plagiarism.Science and engineering ethics · 2024Article
- Big little lies: a compendium and simulation ofRoyal Society open science · 2023Article
- Transparency in conducting and reporting research: A survey of authors, reviewers, and editors across scholarly disciplines.PloS one · 2023Article
- Research Integrity Supervision Practices and Institutional Support: A Qualitative Study.Journal of academic ethics · 2022Article
- Honorary authorship in health sciences: a protocol for a systematic review of survey research.Systematic reviews · 2022Article
- Systematic review and meta-analyses of studies analysing instructions to authors from 1987 to 2017.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Estimating the prevalence of text overlap in biomedical conference abstracts.Research integrity and peer review · 2021Article
- Research Misconduct in the Fields of Ethics and Philosophy: Researchers' Perceptions in Spain.Science and engineering ethics · 2021Article
- Rethinking success, integrity, and culture in research (part 2) - a multi-actor qualitative study on problems of science.Research integrity and peer review · 2021Article
- Predictability in Contemporary Medicine.Frontiers in medicine · 2021Article
- PLAGIARISM: THE CURSE OF INTERNET IN AFRICAN ACADEMIA?Annals of Ibadan postgraduate medicine · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of anonymous surveys asking scientists whether they ever committed various forms of plagiarism. From May to December 2011 we searched 35 bibliographic databases, five grey literature databases and hand searched nine journals for potentially relevant studies. We included surveys that asked scientists if, in a given recall period, they had committed or knew of a colleague who committed plagiarism, and from each survey extracted the proportion of those who reported at least one case. Studies that focused on academic (i.e. student) plagiarism were excluded. Literature searches returned 12,460 titles from which 17 relevant survey studies were identified. Meta-analysis of studies reporting committed (N = 7) and witnessed (N = 11) plagiarism yielded a pooled estimate of, respectively, 1.7% (95% CI 1.2-2.4) and 30% (95% CI 17-46). Basic methodological factors, including sample size, year of survey, delivery method and whether survey questions were explicit rather than indirect made a significant difference on survey results. Even after controlling for these methodological factors, between-study differences in admission rates were significantly above those expected by sampling error alone and remained largely unexplained. Despite several limitations of the data and of this meta-analysis, we draw three robust conclusions: (1) The rate at which scientists report knowing a colleague who committed plagiarism is higher than for data fabrication and falsification; (2) The rate at which scientists report knowing a colleague who committed plagiarism is correlated to that of fabrication and falsification; (3) The rate at which scientists admit having committed either form of misconduct (i.e. fabrication, falsification and plagiarism) in surveys has declined over time.
Indexed as
Identifiers
25352123What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.