Plagiarism in South African management journals

Adele Thomas; Gideon P. de Bruin

doi:10.17159/sajs.2015/20140017

Plagiarism in South African management journals

Authors

Adele Thomas Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
Gideon P. de Bruin Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2015/20140017

Keywords:

academic values, ethics, government subsidy, reputation, universities

Abstract

Plagiarism by academics has been relatively unexplored thus far. However, there has been a growing awareness of this problem in recent years. We submitted 371 published academic articles appearing in 19 South African management journals in 2011 through the plagiarism detection software program Turnitin™. High and excessive levels of plagiarism were detected. The cost to government of subsidising unoriginal work in these journals was calculated to approximate ZAR7 million for the period under review. As academics are expected to role model ethical behaviour to students, such a finding is disturbing and has implications for the reputations of the institutions to which the authors are affiliated as well as that of the journals that publish articles that contain plagiarised material.

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Published

2015-01-29

Issue

Vol. 111 No. 1/2 (2015)

Section

Research Letter

License

All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Copyright is retained by the authors. Readers are welcome to reproduce, share and adapt the content without permission provided the source is attributed.

Disclaimer: The publisher and editors accept no responsibility for statements made by the authors

How to Cite

Thomas, A., & de Bruin, G. P. (2015). Plagiarism in South African management journals. South African Journal of Science, 111(1/2), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2015/20140017