Study of the perception of university students about academic plagiarism

Abstract

Considering the concept of plagiarism as the appropriation or expropriation of copyright, the idea of ​​authorship is questioned in a largely digital society, marked by productivism, whose quantity, quality and recognition of research carried out and published in the academic environment often involve ethical violations. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to present the results achieved in a survey carried out in 2019 on the perception of undergraduate students enrolled in Scientific Initiation and Postgraduate programs at the Federal University of Sergipe (UFS) on Academic Plagiarism, which is a current and necessary debate, which has been widely discussed in the world academic scenario, but which, even with considerable advances, is still lacking at the national level. The research carried out, of an exploratory-descriptive nature, was based on a convenience sampling and considered as a research instrument the application of an online questionnaire, through the Google Forms platform. Based on the results obtained, it was found that undergraduates who do scientific initiation and postgraduates at UFS have few and superficial notions about plagiarism, especially from a theoretical and conceptual point of view, ignoring its specificities, forms of manifestation and the legislation or current and guiding documents on this phenomenon. Although this is a recurring theme nowadays in several spaces, there are still uncertainties about a practice so harmful to intellectual property and scientific integrity, which interferes in the construction of knowledge through specialized research.