Problems of Formal-mechanistic Approach to Identification of Plagiarism in Scientific Works

The effectiveness of research teams and scientists is largely estimated by their publication activity. One indicator of the quality of scientific work is the absence of plagiarism. The purpose of this paper was to consider the problems that arise with the formal-mechanistic approach to the detection of plagiarism in scientific papers. The questions of the correlation of meaning and plagiarism; quoting your own work; quoting and inaccurate quoting; the use of generally accepted expressions, laws, definitions; the need to refine anti-plagiarism systems are considered. It is shown that due to the fact that anti-plagiarism systems do not analyze the meaning of the text, “overdiagnosis” occurs. As a result of an uncritical approach to the conclusions of such systems, the writing of scientific papers becomes more complicated. The necessity of developing more accurate criteria for determining what is plagiarized in scientific papers is noted. Some suggestions were made to reduce the shortcomings of the formal approach.