Bilić-Zulle Lidija, Frković Vedran, Turk Tamara, Azman Josip, Petrovecki Mladen
Department of Computer Science, Rijeka University School of Medicine, Brace Branchetta 20, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia.
Croat Med J. 2005 Feb;46(1):126-31.
To determine the prevalence of plagiarism among medical students in writing essays.
During two academic years, 198 second year medical students attending Medical Informatics course wrote an essay on one of four offered articles. Two of the source articles were available in an electronic form and two in printed form. Two (one electronic and one paper article) were considered less complex and the other two more complex. The essays were examined using plagiarism detection software "WCopyfind," which counted the number of matching phrases with six or more words. Plagiarism rate, expressed as the percentage of the plagiarized text, was calculated as a ratio of the absolute number of matching words and the total number of words in the essay.
Only 17 (9%) of students did not plagiarize at all and 68 (34%) plagiarized less than 10% of the text. The average plagiarism rate (% of plagiarized text) was 19% (5-95% percentile=0-88). Students who were strictly warned not to plagiarize had a higher total word count in their essays than students who were not warned (P=0.002) but there was no difference between them in the rate of plagiarism. Students with higher grades in Medical Informatics exam plagiarized less than those with lower grades (P=0.015). Gender, subject source, and complexity had no influence on the plagiarism rate.
Plagiarism in writing essays is common among medical students. An explicit warning is not enough to deter students from plagiarism. Detection software can be used to trace and evaluate the rate of plagiarism in written student assays.
确定医学生撰写论文时的抄袭发生率。
在两个学年期间，198名参加医学信息学课程的二年级医学生就四篇提供的文章之一撰写一篇论文。其中两篇源文章有电子版本，另外两篇有印刷版本。两篇（一篇电子文章和一篇纸质文章）被认为难度较低，另外两篇难度较高。使用抄袭检测软件“WCopyfind”检查论文，该软件统计六个或更多单词的匹配短语数量。抄袭率以抄袭文本的百分比表示，计算方法为匹配单词的绝对数量与论文总单词数量的比率。
只有17名（9%）学生完全没有抄袭，68名（34%）学生的抄袭文本少于10%。平均抄袭率（抄袭文本的百分比）为19%（第5 - 95百分位数 = 0 - 88）。被严格警告不得抄袭的学生所写论文的总字数比未被警告的学生多（P = 0.002），但他们的抄袭率没有差异。医学信息学考试成绩较高的学生抄袭比成绩较低的学生少（P = 0.015）。性别、主题来源和难度对抄袭率没有影响。
医学生撰写论文时抄袭现象普遍。明确警告不足以阻止学生抄袭。检测软件可用于追踪和评估学生书面作业中的抄袭率。
