students perception of scientific ethics mainly plagiarism and solutions for its associated shortcomings

HO CHI MINH UEH UNIVERSITY CONG TRINH DU THI GIAI THUONG DE TAI MON HỌC XUẤT SẮC UEH500 NAM 2023 TEN CONG TRINH: STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF SCIENTIFIC ETHICS, MAINLY PLAGIARISM AND

TRUONG DAI HOC KINH TE TP HO CHI MINH

UEH

UNIVERSITY

CONG TRINH DU THI

GIAI THUONG

DE TAI MON HỌC XUẤT SẮC UEH500 NAM 2023

TEN CONG TRINH:

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION OF SCIENTIFIC ETHICS,

MAINLY PLAGIARISM AND SOLUTIONS FOR ITS

ASSOCIATED SHORTCOMINGS

DE TAI THUOC KHOA/VIEN: TOAN - THONG KE

MSDT (Do BTC ghi):

TP Hồ Chí Minh - 2023

FOREWORD Over the years, Vietnam has been implementing many scientific topics and projects This is clearly seen in the number of scientific projects granted patents at universities and research institutes every year However, issues related to scientific ethics have not yet received due attention, especially in the university environment There are many reasons leading to violations of scientific ethics, but the main reason is still the fact that the scientific research side is negligent in protecting its intellectual property, creating conditions for bad guys to steal technological know-how and profiteering

Realizing the importance of raising awareness about scientific ethics, the research team will carry out a project named "Students' perception of scientific ethics, mainly plagiarism, and solutions for its associated shortcomings" with the hope that it will help students understand the importance of protecting their own intellectual property and respecting the intellectual property of others

2.1.2 Scientific ethics concept

2.1.3 Scientific ethics violations

2.1.4 Basic principles of scientific ethics

2.2 Scientific ethics at universities

2.3 Basic causes leading to violations of scientific ethics

2.4, Regulations of the Law on scientific ethics

4.1.4, Reasons for “Plagiarism” behavior

4.1.5 The consequences of “Plagiarism”

4.1.6 Solution recommendation

4.2 Statistical inference

4.2.1 Interval estimation about the difference between two population means 4.2.2 Hypothesis test about the difference between two population means CHAPTER 5

PROPOSAL AND CONCLUSION

Figure 3 The universities the survey participants are studying at

Figure 4 The age of the survey participants

Figure 5 The percentage of both gender who have done the survey

Figure 6 The year of university that the survey participants are attending

Figure 7 The percentage of participants that have heard of the term

“Scientific ethics”

Figure 8 The number of votes for the most common violation of

“Scientific ethics”

Figure 9 The percentage of people that get definition of “Plagiarism” right

Figure 10 The survey respondents’ scores for university students’ understanding

of the term “Plagiarism”

Figure 11 The number of respondents who have committed certain acts of

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Research context

Currently, plagiarism, or violation of scientific ethics, is a common practice in Vietnam This is the act of stealing a work, using someone's gray matter without specifying the source, and using it as one's

own product The current situation shows that this is a problem appearing in many fields such as education, publishing, etc In research or study, this is a taboo action because it leads to harm, such as limiting personal development, causing damage to the author, which, if discovered, will be dropped and permanently left on personal records, ete

Although the harmful effects of violating scientific ethics have been warned about in the newspapers in Vietnam, they seem to have little impact on students Some students still tend to copy, get ideas from other sources without properly quoting, or use translation tools and AI incorrectly The most common habit of students when making theses and graduation thesis is to find the products of previous students with the same topic for "referencing" If "referencing" in the direction of inheritance and development of the topic, there is nothing worth mentioning But many students use these materials as a source of "cooking" for their writing However, there are also many students who are working hard to study and write properly

The causes of popular plagiarism among students today are quite diverse First,

it can be mentioned that students lack a clear and complete awareness of scientific ethics The second is due to the introduction of automated writing tools such as Canva's Magic Editor, Chat GPT, etc., which have led students to rely on and abuse it

In addition, there are many other reasons that have been and are being investigated to understand the source of this problem

So, what are the common factors that cause students to frequently violate scientific ethics? Are students' awareness of scientific ethics sufficient or not? What inadequacies did the students’ awareness of the problem lead to? Is there any way to fix or minimize this situation?

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With the above main questions, the survey "Students’ perception of scientific ethics, mainly plagiarism and solutions for its associated shortcomings" was carried out to have an objective view of the plagiarism situation among students, thereby overcoming the problem

1.2 Research problem statement

1.2.1, Research questions

@ The origin of plagiarism

@ How do students perceive scientific ethics?

@ What scientific ethical violations are common?

@ The level of impact of violating scientific ethics

@ Scientific ethics and inadequacies

@ How to reduce plagiarism?

Based on the answers to the preceding questions, we can conclude that scientific ethics plays an important role not only in university life but also in the future

in general Finding out the current situation, difficulties, and reviews from students of many universities, we discover many aspects that can be developed That is also the reason why our group decided the topic “Students' perception of scientific ethics, mainly plagiarism and solutions for its associated shortcomings” would be the focus of this project

1.2.2 Research problems

Currently, in studying and researching at universities, the phenomenon of plagiarism is becoming more and more common In order to provide appropriate knowledge and consider behaviors to reduce plagiarism, we conducted this study to find out the perception of students at UEH and other universities about scientific ethics and other limitations

@ Survey the number of people who understand the issue of plagiarism on a specific scale and time period

From the small group of students mentioned above, we propose solutions to improve the situation of plagiarism and the quality of Vietnamese literary products 1.4, Research scope and subject

1.5 Research data source

Research data is based on at least 200 actual survey forms with relevant questions posed by the research team within 2 days, or on research, websites, newspapers, or news that has been made public before

1.6 Research content

Students’ awareness of scientific ethics and its drawbacks

1.7 Theme structure

Chapter | Introduction

Chapter 2 Theoretical basis, previous research results and research model Chapter 3 Research method

Chapter 4 Research analysis and result

Chapter 5 Conclusion and recommendation

CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL BASIS, PREVIOUS RESEARCH RESULTS AND

RESEARCH MODEL 2.1 Theoretical basis

2.1.2 Scientific ethics concept

Scientific ethics is a system of values and ethical standards applied in the field

of science, including the principles of serving the common good, following the scientific process, honesty, transparency, and respect for colleagues and participants in scientific research

“Ethics in scientific research is a part of social ethics, which are rules and standards aimed at regulating the voluntary behavior of scientists in scientific research activities Ethics in scientific research is also influenced by factors such as cultural environment, social ethics, the development of science and technology, human cognitive level, the law, the individual personality of the researcher, etc (Assoc.Prof.Dr Cao Thu Hang, 202L)

This research mainly focuses on plagiarism, which is related to scientific ethics

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“Plagiarism is the use of another person's language, ideas, organization, pictures, figures, creations, inventions, etc., or other forms of work under one's own name; it includes both private intellectual property and public material property; It includes buying articles, cutting and pasting from Internet sources, not using quotation marks when quoting directly, rewriting other people's ideas without citing the source, hiring others to write articles or parts of articles, and publishing it under his own name” (Liddell, 2003, P 49)

Accordingly, scientific ethics "prohibit students from copying your own or other people's work While writing articles, students can refer to documents from many different official sources When quoting (referencing documents), they must include full information: author's name, document name, publisher's name, etc., place of publication, year of publication, page of citation”

2.1.3 Scientific ethics violations

In terms of scientific ethics, we can easily come across many violations, not only actions that are not in accordance with ethical standards but also forms of violations that we cannot expect

These are the most typical violations:

@ Failure to Support Validation of Your Research

© Failure to Respond to Known Cases of Unsuccessful Validation Attempts

@ Inappropriate Behavior in Relation to Suspected Misconduct

2.1.4 Basic principles of scientific ethics

Ethics are standards and principles that are recognized by public opinion, regulating human behavior and relationships with each other and with society Scientific ethical standards are summarized through six principles:

@ Honesty and objectivity in science

@ Be careful when analyzing scientific results to avoid errors

@ Analyze and interpret scientific results to avoid errors

@ Open and public

@ Fully validate results and accurately cite sources of information, data and ideas

@ Have a moral responsibility to society

2.2 Scientific ethics at universities

Most universities and research institutes have only mentioned academic Integrity in some provisions of their training regulations without a separate document with strict implementation guidelines Large universities such as Vietnam National University, Hanoi or Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City have some guidelines on plagiarism prevention, citation, anti-copying, etc However, those guidelines are still far from the regulations on plagiarism Academic integrity in research is addressed by developed countries Only a few schools, such as the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Hoa Sen University, Duy Tan University have issued their own rules on plagiarism and academic integrity, as well as the use of common anti-plagiarism software (like Turnitin or 1Thenticate) to check Obviously, the lack of state laws and specific guidelines from such scientific and educational institutions makes it difficult to prevent and handle violations

For example, a media research book from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities was withdrawn because an article had 85% of its content translated from

an international research paper There has not been a comprehensive, large-scale study

of plagiarism or the general violation of academic integrity in the social sciences and humanities in Vietnam, but the public presence of “thesis markets”, “discourse market

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projects", "marketing lesson plans" online, where instances of plagiarism occur not only among students and graduate students, but also among researchers or even individuals who have been assessed as having a voice in academia, shows the seriousness of this problem

2.3 Basic causes leading to violations of scientific ethics

The first reason is that the party performing the scientific research is negligent

In protecting their intellectual property and technological know-how Research institutes and universities do not yet have specialized departments or units to advise and support scientists in the process of intellectual property registration Failure to register intellectual property will create conditions for bad people to steal ideas and profit from them

The second reason is that scientists themselves do not clearly understand the importance of patent registration and procedures for intellectual property registration for their products Due to the lack of advice from experts on intellectual property registration and how to write project descriptions, scientists are often afraid of writing

an IP application, thinking that their technological know-how will be revealed The third reason is due to the increasing number of patent applications, which leads to very slow patent procedures This contributes to scientists not applying for patents because they think they will be late to publish their scientific topics in scientific conferences and forums

The last reason is that the sanctions for dealing with violations of scientific ethics are not deterrent enough, especially for criminals who use high technology to steal the technological know-how of scientists

2.4, Regulations of the Law on scientific ethics

According to Article 25 Vietnam Intellectual Property Law 2005:

Article 25, Cases when published works may be used without having to seek permission or pay royalties or remuneration

1 Published works may be used without having to seek permission or pay royalties or remuneration in the following cases:

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(a) Making one copy of the work of an author for scientific research or teaching purposes;

(b) Reasonable quoting from a work in order to comment on or illustrate one's own

works, without misrepresenting the author's views;

(c) Quoting from a work in order to write an article published in a newspaper or periodical, in a radio or television broadcast or in a documentary, without misrepresenting the author's views;

(d) Quoting from a work in school or university for lecturing purposes without misrepresenting the author's views and not for commercial purposes;

(dd) Copying of a work by a library for archival and research purposes;

(ec) Performing a stage work or other art work in mass cultural, communication or mobilization activities without collecting fees in any form;

(g) Audio-visual recording of a performance in order to report current events or for teaching purposes;

(h) Photographing or televising plastic art; or an architectural, photographic, or applied art work displayed at a public place in order to present images of such work;

(1) Transcribing a work into braille or into characters of other languages for the blind; (k) Importing copies of another's work for personal use

2.5 Previous research

Plagiarism or violations of scientific ethics are a worldwide problem, not just in Vietnam It is becoming more common and is a serious problem in global scientific development (Park, 2003) McCabe (2017) surveyed 63,700 undergraduate students and 9,250 graduate students in the US in the three years from 2002 to 2005 McCabe's survey found that 36% of students and 24% of graduate students admitted to having copied from the Internet for their reports without citing the source; 38% of students and 25% of graduate students admitted to copying from books and/or articles for their reports without citing the source; and 14% of students and 7% of students admitted to fabricating references When it comes to familiarity with the term “plagiarism”, 95%

of university students say “yes” and the remaining 5% say “maybe” (Dionysis

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Kokkinos, Alexandros Koulouris, 2019) When asked if they had copied another author's words, phrases, or ideas without citing them, 50% said sometimes, 39% said never, 10% were uncertain, and 1% said they did it on every paper (Dionysis Kokkinos, Alexandros Koulouris, 2019)

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In a study by Master Nguyen Thi Hong Thuong, University of Transport Technology (2017) said that in a survey on students’ understanding of intellectual property and copyright, 21% knew it through the subjects in class, 46% knew it through self-study and 33% didn't know Among the students who conducted the same survey, 26% cited appropriately and with citation, 50% cited appropriately and without citation, and 24% cited verbatim and did not cite sources

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In another research paper by Phan Thi Diem Huong, Nguyen Thi Minh Nghia, Faculty of Tourism, Hue University (2017) pointed out that “among students and lecturers participating in the survey, 66.1% admitted that they have copied a short sentence/paragraph from the Internet into their test/essay/dissertation more than 2 times; 40.4% copied a passage or sentence from someone else's test/essay/thesis/article into their own The form of doing homework for others is also considered plagiarism,

in which doing homework for others accounts for the highest rate of 40.4%, doing the PowerPoint presentation for 22.9%, and 11.0% for a paragraph in the essay” The reasons indicated are internal causes, including workload, skills, pressure, time, etc., and external causes, including plagiarism becoming more common, a lack of recommendations from lecturers and schools or publishers, and people can easily access free resources

2.6 Hypothesis and research model

The research model helps researchers as well as readers visualize the direction

of analysis and research in this survey Regarding the plagiarism situation of Vietnamese people, based on the research of (Auer and Krupar, 2001), Dordoy (2002), and (Smith, 2007), we build a model based on the actual situation and two factors main influence on plagiarism Thereby helping readers recognize the positive consequences and propose appropriate solutions

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Awareness

Habit

The extent to which student

make plagiarism errors

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CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHOD 3.1 Data target

Plagiarism is one of the most common violations of scientific ethics in the world in general and in Vietnam in particular The data target for this research is to collect the latest data on the perception of students in Ho Chi Minh City about the concept, causes, consequences and solutions to the problem of plagiarism Unlike previous studies, we focused not only on the number of students who had committed plagiarism or had heard about plagiarism definition, but also on how they perceived the causes, consequences, and solutions for reducing plagiarism

@ Gender: Randomly surveyed including both men and women

@ Data collection: Fill out the online survey form

What year are Ask surveyors their Ratio

you in? school years

Awareness How much do you Ratio

about scientific understand about

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ethics scientific ethics?

Forms of Through use make Nominal

violation choices for the given

scientific ethics forms

Awareness How much do you Ratio

about understand about

plagiarism in plagiarism?

educational

environment

Understanding | Based on word use, Interval

level give points (5 point -

scale) on how well students understand plagiarism Students’ What students used to Interval

quoting habits | do related to quoting

Seriousness of | How do students rate Interval

plagiarism the seriousness of

plagiarism?

Reasons that Internal and external Interval

lead to reasons

plagiarism

Consequences | Evaluate the impact of Interval

of plagiarism the consequences

Solution to Evaluate the Interval

limit effectiveness of the

@ Methods of data collection and processing

After collecting the data from the online survey form, enter the data into the computer Data is entered, processed and analyzed

e@ Descriptive statistics method

Here, descriptive statistics are used to test reliability The data, after being analyzed, will be presented in the form of tables and figures, making the data easier to observe, clearer, and easier to understand

e Inferential statistics method

The data is estimated, hypothesized, and then calculated to determine whether the hypothesis is correct or incorrect From there, reject the false hypothesis and draw conclusions

3.3.2 Tools and software

@ Collection tool: Google Forms

@ Statistical tools: Microsoft Excel

@ Computer software: Microsoft Excel Microsoft Word

3.4, Reliability and validity

Factors affecting the reliability and accuracy of collected data:

@ Survey participants are not dedicated and responsible for the data they give

@ The scope of the survey does not fully cover the current social situation

@ Survey participants intentionally filled in wrong information for personal purposes such as privacy

Solutions given to enhance the liability and accuracy of collected data:

It is necessary

@ To design the survey questionnaires in a strict, logical, and reasonable manner so that the survey respondents can easily understand and do it

@ To conduct a survey with subjects suitable for the research topic

@ To receive a serious attitude when conducting surveys to avoid too much biased results from survey takers

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CHAPTER 4 RESEARCH ANALYSIS AND RESULT 4.1 Descriptive statistics

University Frequency Percent frequency

is four times higher than the number of participants from other universities

Figure 4: The age of the survey participants:

Under 18 From 18 to 25 From 26 to 30

@ Male @ Female

Year Number of students Percent frequency

Year 3 46 23

Figure 6 has shown that over half of the participants are freshmen, occupied at

110 Students of year 3 are a half lower, at 46 people, accounting for nearly a quarter

of the overall participants The number of students in year 2 and year 4 are the same at

22 people accounting for 11% of the total participants