Discussing plagiarism in Latin American science

Most developed countries have extensive guidelines about research integrity, which reflects a global attempt to harmonize policies for handling research misconduct. For the editors and readers of English-language international journals, the question of plagiarism is of particular concern. Here, we look at the perception of plagiarism among Brazilian scientists. Our results suggest that the concept of plagiarism itself is not clear: although our participants unanimously regarded the use of the ideas and data of other researchers as wrong, they had mixed opinions about using passages of text. We also found that plagiarism is a sensitive issue, which is not yet appropriately addressed by formal institutional guidelines in all Latin American countries.