Ideas About Plagiarism and Self-plagiarism with University Professors and Researchers: A Case Study with WebQDA

Abstract

Plagiarism is a problem that has more presence in our society, and it is increasingly. It is an attack on the rights of authors, it does not respect for research ethics. For this reason, the objective of our study, with qualitative focus, was to know what teachers and researchers of the University of Extremadura do who participated in the Workshop Introduction to Qualitative Analysis Software webQDA, think about the plagiarism and self-plagiarism of scientific documents. Four categories emerged from the analysis carried out: (a) concept of plagiarism and self-plagiarism, (b) motives for plagiarism, (c) use of self-plagiarism software and (e) frequency of plagiarism. The most significant results suggest that sometimes self-plagiarism is not considered plagiarism and from the perspective of the investigation the intentions of those who commit plagiarism determine its definition and impact. In addition, participants do not express concern about evaluating the originality of a text using specialized computer media.