Awareness and perception of plagiarism a study of Universities of North Western region of India

Abstract

Abstract (Maximum Characters:2048) Plagiarism is an alarming academic menace which is adversely affecting academic community. This study was conducted with an aim to assess the prevailing scenario in selected universities regarding awareness and perception of plagiarism amongst the stakeholders i.e., research scholars, faculty members and library professionals. This study had taken into account North Western Region of ICSSR and included seven academic State Universities fall under this region. Five disciplines of sciences comprising botany, zoology, physics, chemistry and mathematics and five disciplines of social sciences comprising economics, sociology, psychology, political science and history were the domains of this study. Three detailed questionnaires were circulated amongst three categories of respondents i.e., research scholars, faculty members and library professionals and the data was collected from them. The data collected was then analysed with the help of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Questionnaire method also used to know the awareness, perception of the respondents towards plagiarism. The study also brought into focus the attitude of research scholars of social sciences and sciences, role of faculty members and library professionals in this newly emerging challenge of plagiarism. It is hereby concluded from the observations of the results of the study that all three types of respondents i.e., research scholars, faculty members and library professionals from selected universities differed significantly for variables Awareness about main components of plagiarism ; Perception about main components of plagiarism ; Role of faculty members and library professionals in curbing plagiarism and Impressions of the respondents for plagiarism detection tools/software whereas there is insignificant difference in the attitude of science research scholars and social science research scholars for plagiarism. This study has wide and positive implications.