Abstract:

Plagiarism is not a new word among academicians, but there is equivocal understanding on the ethical issue and how to avoid it in daily academic activity. Until recently, plagiarism occurs across the nations and continents regardless of mother-language being spoken in the particular state or country. In this context, the ministry of education and culture (MOEC) of the republic of Indonesia had issued a new guidence number 17 (2010) on academic plagiarism and its preventing action that already on effect for every student, lecturer, and administrative staff. Owing to the public concern on academic plagiarism, the implementation of such guidence are applied to three categories, first, for university students pursuing either under- or post graduate programs; second, for academic and administrative rank promotion and, third for obtaining profesional lecturer certificate. The immediate effect appeared in 2011 where almost 40 % of lecturers underwent a professional certification failed to get the certificate mostly because of plagiarism found in their teaching portfolio. In 2012, the case dropped dramatically to only about 4 % indicating the positive impact of the guideance number 17 (2010) to prevent plagiarism after the failure of a large number of lecturers to obtain the professional certificate. This means they are not eligible to receive double basic salary. In contrast, the number of both intentional and unintentional plagiarism escalated in the recent years particularly found from the journal article documents submitted for applying to get promotion of professorship rank in many Indonesian universities. Most of them who found guilty received punishment in the form of suspension to apply for academic promotion at least for 2 – 3 years. There are several inherent causes of plagiarism identified that is (1) lack of writing skills; (2) lack of proper understanding on the nature of plagiarism; (3) paternalistic culture; (4) the relative light punishment towards plagiarism; (5) the emergence of instant culture; and (6) the accessibility of internet that influence the Ctrl C + Ctrl V practice.In the context of Indonesia, the new reward and tenure systems for lecturer working in the public university and colleges are considered as one of the driving factor to the escalating unacceptable academic disintegrity. In conclusion, there is of paramount to change the mind set among academicians on the nature of plagiarism and how to prevent it as the current condition perhaps only the tip of an iceberg of academic dishonesty regardless of geographical or national identity.

Keywords:

Plagiarism, academicians, culture, Indonesia.