Plagiarism widespread in Kazakhstan’s academic community

One in 10 academic papers in Kazakhstan contains some plagiarism, Tengri News reports, citing the National Center of Science and Technical Information.

A computerized check of 7,000 papers written for master’s and doctoral programs in the country since 2010 found that 9.7 percent contained work “borrowed” from another author without proper citation, according to Tengri.

In addition, the number of foreign journal articles by authors in Kazakhstan is on the rise, but most are in periodicals “that cannot be considered reputable sources.”

Only two of the five journals where Kazakhstani researchers were most frequently published are highly rated, according to Daniyar Sapargaliev, deputy director of the Research and Development Center at Almaty Management University.

Plagiarism is also causing problems in the country’s legislative process, Tengri News reports, as the habit among some government officials of indiscriminately copying laws from other countries slows down the work of parliament.

Using other countries’ laws as a model is not unique to Kazakhstan, but the bills’ drafters are doing wholesale copying, not adapting the bills to local circumstances.

As a result, of 114 bills proposed by the government during the current session of parliament, only 38 percent did not contravene some national law or regulation, Tengri News reports.

“Oftentimes, a developer borrows rules from a foreign law without taking into consideration the national legislation. For example, many of the rules in the Draft Law on Personal Data duplicated rules of a similar law of one of the CIS countries and contradicted seven codes and 27 laws of Kazakhstan. The parliament had to rework the bill completely,” legislator Kabibulla Dzhakupov told a joint session of parliament, according to Tengri News.

Asked about the governmental plagiarism allegations, Economy Minister Yerbolat Dossaev told journalists that the guilty would be held responsible.

Even the quality of the translations of foreign legislation is debatable, Dossaev acknowledged.

This article was originally published by Transitions Online.  

 

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