How is research on academic plagiarism in China conducted? A preliminary investigation of the recent change in the style of writing in an academic journal

This paper reports on the findings from a study on an academic journal – Academics in China. The journal, launched in 1986, is representative of academic journals in China in the field of the humanities and social sciences. It deals with the issue of academic plagiarism and other forms of academic corruption. By analysing articles about academic plagiarism published in this journal in 1999, 2000, 2004 and 2008, it provides statistics and analysis on the perception of Chinese academics about plagiarism within Chinese academe. It found that open discussion about academic plagiarism and other academic corruption in China dramatically increased after 2000 as: (1) the number of articles dealing with academic plagiarism in this period increased dramatically compared to the previous period, and (2) more authors were concerned about this issue than they were before 2000. Although much concern has been raised about this issue since the mid 1990s, no empirical study seems to have been conducted on plagiarism by Chinese academics.