Intellectual property right and patent: Conceptual awareness of PhD students about plagiarism

Due to unawareness about intellectual property laws, researchers very often became a victim of plagiarism. Researches have proved that plagiarism is a common factor among the students and it is due to unawareness of plagiarism. Sometimes it is intentionally and sometimes it unintentionally. The present study tries to find out the conceptual awareness of research students through different aspects. For this purpose a descriptive study was conducted. The objectives of the study were to examine the researcher´s conceptual awareness about about specific terminologies of plagiarism, types of plagiarism and penalties of plagiarism. The target population of the study was sixty PhD and M. Phil research students. The whole population of the study was taken as sample. A self made questionnaire with different options was used to collect the data on different aspects covering the concept of plagiarism. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics. Major finding infer were that most of the students had general conception of plagiarism but research students were unaware of the types of plagiarism. Majority of the students were unaware about the penalties of plagiarism. On the basis of findings it was concluded that students were not well aware about the concept of plagiarism. It concluded that students are partially aware about the plagiarism and Intellectual Property Rights. So Research students may be provided clear concept of all aspects of plagiarism. Researchers may be given assignments for practicing about citations through different sources and orientation about intellectual property laws may be provided about the use of knowledge in a fair way.