Abstract

Plagiarism is not an issue observed only among students; rather, it also occurs in the publications of researchers in academic journals. The current study explored how Nobel laureates, with the highest possible academic status in the world, engage in text borrowing. A list of 91 laureates in physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine, and economics from 2006 to 2015 were identified and their publications were collected and analysed using Turnitin software. The findings of the current study revealed that Nobel laureates’ journal publications outperform those of their counterparts in terms of text borrowing, even though there are still incidences of extensive text borrowing and the lack of appropriate citations observed in their publications. Most of the text borrowing in question consists of self-plagiarism and methods section text, in agreement of earlier research findings. In addition, papers by authors whose affiliated institutions are located in English-speaking countries exhibit fewer incidences of text borrowing than papers by authors whose affiliated institutions are located in non-English-speaking countries, whereas the number of authors does not play a significant role in text borrowing.

摘要

剽窃不仅仅是学生之间的问题；相反，它也出现在研究人员在学术期刊上的出版物中。目前的研究探讨了诺贝尔奖获得者在世界上可能拥有最高学术地位的情况，他们是如何进行文字借用的。确定了 2006 年至 2015 年物理、化学、生理学和医学以及经济学领域的 91 位获奖者名单，并使用 Turnitin 软件收集和分析了他们的出版物。当前研究的结果表明，诺贝尔奖获得者的期刊出版物在文本借用方面优于同行，尽管仍然存在大量文本借用和缺乏适当引用的现象。有问题的大部分文字借用由自我抄袭和方法部分文字组成，与早期的研究结果一致。此外，附属机构位于英语国家的作者的论文比附属机构位于非英语国家的作者的论文借用文本的发生率要低，而作者数量并没有起到显着的作用在文字借用中。