Plagiarizing Scientific Materials from the Internet and its Repercussions on University Education

Abstract

The paper aims to disclose the level of the scientific plagiarism from the faculties’ point of view taken into account their specialization whether scientific-human, scientific title, gender, academic degree. (350) faculties were chosen from (7) Iraqi universities (Baghdad, Al-Mustansiriya, Mosul, Tikrit, Anbar, Kufa, Karbala) are taken as sample of the study. The researchers use a questionnaire that consisted of (35) paragraphs with (5) options (very widespread, highly widespread, moderately widespread, little widespread, very little widespread). It was divided into two sections: scientific plagiarism which includes (15) paragraphs, and repercussions of scientific plagiarism which includes (23) paragraphs after verifying and reliability.  The results show a high level of the scientific plagiarism from the point of view of faculties whereby the (linguistic synonyms) rank the first paragraph which reached (83.1%) in the first section. Whilst, the results show that (assigning the wrong person in the inappropriate place) rank the first which reached 82.1% in the second section.  The results also show that there were no significant differences as according to specialization, scientific titles and academic degree. Whilst, there were statistically significant differences in favor of the scientific titles under category (Professor). On this basis, the study recommended to impose strict penalties towards those who are proven to be plagiarists and to design a special website in the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research to report about scientific plagiarism, follow up and verify their papers to take the necessary measures towards them.