Plagiarism needs more attention

Plagiarism needs more attention

By Ignas Keleden

This is the first of two articles exploring academic life in Indonesia taking a clue from the recent case of alleged plagiarism by a student of a respected university.

JAKARTA (JP): The recent alleged case of academic plagiarism at the Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University deserves more attention than it has been given.

Apart from the violation of academic ethics, the case cannot be attributed only to the accused but to the whole academic community.

Plagiarism has at least three aspects. First, it can be seen as a structural problem, second, as a cultural problem, and third, as an individual problem.

The structural problem refers to the whole structure of academic relations, which enable or prevent such a case from occurring. The cultural problem refers to the introduction and implementation of academic convention in general and the convention of writing a scientific work in particular. The individual problem hints at the personal situation of the suspect.

Press reports say that Drs. Suyono M.S., a graduate student, wrote a master's degree thesis about political socialization, as conducted at secondary schools in Indonesia. An undergraduate student of a private university in Surabaya, Dra. Siswati, learned of this thesis from a report in a Gadjah Mada University periodical and noticed that the title of the work looked similar with that of her own.

After a close examination, both Siswati and her supervisor, Dr. Ramlan Soerbakti, found more similarities in the research question chosen, the methodology applied, as well as the main findings of the study. Many sentences are even quite identical.

Soerbakti then sent a letter to the Gadjah Mada University's department of political science. The university responded by setting up a committee to investigate the case.

Another interesting fact is that Suyono, when asked by the press, said he knew nothing about the undergraduate's thesis in Surabaya. This implies that, given some major similarities between the two works, they must be a mere coincidence.

Evidently the case has a structural linkage. Students who want to write their theses are required to have an overview of previous works done on the subject.

This review serves two purposes. On the one hand, it is aimed at providing the state of the art in the study and research of a particular subject matter. Such a survey usually consists of a bibliographic review, or overview, which shows that other studies of the same subject should be known, appreciated, or criticized. Academic work is based on academic tradition, and one cannot start writing a thesis on a certain subject as if he is the first to give attention to such a problem area.

On the other hand, with such a background knowledge of what has been done before, a student can delineate his research question in such a way that both the findings he will attain, or the perspective he is going to use, and the methodology he wants to apply, might give another contribution to all the works which have been done before.

The contribution can be seen both in terms of content and method. Content wise, it might be a positive addition to previous findings, or it might partly or totally reject the previous findings, or give a new interpretation to the previous findings. With regard to method, it can introduce a new method to deal with the research problem, or show weaknesses of the previous methods used.

The highest level of achievement is attained if one is able to lift up a level of discourse, in which the study conducted and the subject investigated are treated in a totally new way, which opens a totally new world of investigation and demonstrates a totally new way of looking at things. In that case, one contributes to the foundation of a new level of discourse, resulting in the so-called paradigm shift.

However, the above requirement can be satisfactorily met if there is a good center of academic information. In the early 1970s the Indonesian Institute of Sciences in Jakarta published a bulletin entitled Index of Indonesian Learned Periodicals, containing the most important scientific publications in Indonesian periodicals and magazines. This index was published once a year.

If a student is required to have an overview of the related studies which have been done in their field of study, it follows that there must be an information center which collects the most important research conducted within a year.

This sort of information center, or good library, is lacking in most of the universities. This situation has developed to the extent that information about the research and studies of other members of academic communities in Indonesia can be obtained only through personal relations, not through institutional relations.

In order for such a center of scientific information to exist, two conditions must be fulfilled. First, the studies conducted by Indonesian scholars and students should be regularly published. Second, there should be one or several institutions which specialize in documenting, classifying, indexing and, if possible, abstracting such publications.

If this is not done, we have no reasons to blame our students who happen to have no idea of what has been done by other scholars. There is also no reason to complain if there happen to be some studies which are only repetitious in both the theme and method, because there are no sources to consult with, which enable a comparison with other related studies conducted before.

If the Indonesian academia wants to push a higher quality of learning and research, this can only be done if it is supported by systematic documentation, which, again, is enabled by regular publications made accessible to the members of the academic community.

It is common knowledge that Indonesian academia is very poor in this regard. If we want to build the academia according to minimum international standards, an information center for research findings and a related library should be made available and accessible to university students.

In fact there is nothing new in what has been said above, since research is one job which is assigned to the academia by the Indonesian government. In academic terms, research should be conducted according to the minimum academic criteria, whereby the prerequisites for such criteria should be fulfilled. Otherwise, we use the label "research" to signify other sorts of businesses, that have very little to do with the academic performance and the progress of knowledge, which become the very reason why research should be conducted and promoted at all.

Besides the structural aspect, research also has its cultural aspect, which makes up the so-called academic ethos. When a graduate student writes a thesis, it is usually done in cooperation with, and under the guidance of a supervisor. Therefore, the thesis can be seen as a result which reflects the individual academic achievement of a student and the quality of the supervision provided to them by the supervisor.

In the case of Suyono, we can proceed from two possibilities: either he wrote the thesis by himself, without reading the thesis from Surabaya beforehand, or he has read it and made use of the materials of the thesis without attribution, which is required by academic conventions.

If the former is the case, then we are faced with the difficulties posed by many striking similarities between the two works, as reported by the press so far. How can we account for the fact that the research question, the methodology applied and the formulation of research findings are so similar. Besides, it is hard to believe that many identical sentences are merely a coincidence. However, to do justice to the student, we have to wait for the findings of the committee.

If the latter is the case, this must have been detected before the completion of the thesis; during the supervision and periodical consultations. On such occasions, the supervisor usually raises critical questions about the reasons for taking a particular research question, why a particular method is used, and how the student has come to the findings and conclusion. If it was plagiarized, we could imagine that the student concerned must have been in great difficulties when answering the questions about things he has not produced himself, as well as the scientific procedure he did not go through. In other words, dishonesty must have been uncovered and established.

This implies that the quality of a thesis reflects not just the student's individual performance and personal achievement, but also the quality of academic guidance and consultation provided by a certain department and the academia in general.

In such consultations, the supervisor assumes the role of an agent of "organized skepticism", namely, the obligation to pay attention to the work of other members of the academic community, by giving their appreciation, comments and criticisms, which put the work in comparison with other similar works.

This is a general rule, whose exceptions must not necessarily be ignored, whereby a very strong and intelligent student can go his way with self-confidence while persuading their supervisor to approve it.

The point is, the behavior of students in the learning and writing of their theses cannot be seen independently from the question as to whether and to what extent academic conventions, as a subculture in an academic community, has been encouraged and promoted, or discouraged and neglected within the Indonesian academia.