2022-06-16

Distance training for the Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry community

On 15 June 2022 representatives of the Office gave distance training to the academic community of the Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry. More than 60 community members attended the training. The Ombudswoman Dr Loreta Tauginienė explained what plagiarism and self-plagiarism are and how to avoid them. The Ombudsperson discussed the concept of academic ethics and the development of its regulation in scientific activities in Lithuania, as well as various breaches of academic ethics, with a focus on plagiarism and its forms. During the training, the participants discussed an example of paraphrasing, the ethical aspects of publishing, and the best practices of foreign publishing houses in granting permissions for republication of scientific publications. The community was actively involved in the training: they were interested in how the text-matching software works; how to assess text matches in the references and the introduction; how to cite and paraphrase the text correctly to avoid serious breaches of academic ethics; whether it is possible to publish additional articles from the same dataset that was used for the dissertation, etc.

During the meeting, the Senior Specialist (Senior Analyst) of the Office, Dr Eglė Ozolinčiūtė presented tools to avoid image plagiarism. The training covered tools that can detect duplicate images. The representative of the Office highlighted the importance of attribution and the types of licences that determine what can or cannot be done with images when they are re-used. It also discusses how to cite them properly. The Centre’s community raised questions about whether a license is granted for a specific image or for the idea behind it; what to do if you see a colleague using visual material (e.g., a table) that is not your own; how widely the material can be shared; etc.