Science, Creative Activity and Academic Plagiarism: Connections and Contradictions

Abstract

In the study, the phenomenon of academic plagiarism is considered a result of creative scientific activity, which exists in a certain institutional design and is immersed in the appropriate environment and economic, socio-political circumstances. The study uses philosophical principles as a method—humanistic, historical, comprehensiveness and determinism, system and practice, specificity and activity. The historical retrospective shows that theft and misappropriation of other people’s intellectual property existed already in ancient societies. The prevalence of the phenomenon and the ambiguity of its interpretation inspired us to explore academic plagiarism in its various aspects. The neurobiological principles of the human brain work in a way that promotes mimesis, reproduction, copying, and unconscious combinations of memories. The process of creative activity includes many subtle underresearched components that are difficult to capture or identify, such as a source of inspiration. The processes of socialization and assimilation of cultural norms consist in the reproduction of rules of conduct, in the level of assimilation of deep cultural norms, values, ideals, and codes. Thus, culture, as a factor of influence, promotes, generates, encourages, and justifies plagiarism. Postmodernist culture, like no other cultural paradigm, contributes to the transformation of understanding of what is called plagiarism, because it has fundamentally changed the moral attitude towards it. Various global and local socio-economic factors can also, for different reasons, intensify and contribute to such a negative phenomenon as academic plagiarism. We emphasize that the modern scientific environment is quite complex, it involves about ten million people worldwide. New forms of organization of the scientific environment cause its bureaucratization, standardization, unification, functional, and stylistic stereotypes. Which, in turn, have led to the massification of such a negative phenomenon as plagiarism. In conclusion, the authors argue that the ineffectiveness of the means of combating academic plagiarism arises due to a lack of understanding of the nature of the phenomenon. Rethinking the essence of creativity and institutional changes in science will help overcome academic plagiarism.