Special issue: Responsible writing in science Biochemia Medica 2010;20(3):307-13 307 Abstract Introduction: Plagiarism is one of the most frequent and serious forms of misconduct in academic environment. The cross-sectional survey study was done with aim to explore the attitudes toward plagiarism. Materials and methods: First year students of Faculty of Pharmacy and Medical Biochemistry, University of Zagreb, Croatia (N = 146) were anonymously tested using Attitude toward Plagiarism (ATP) questionnaire. The questionnaire is composed of 29 statements on a 5 point Likert scale, (1 – strongly disagree, 2 – disagree, 3 – neither agree nor disagree, 4 – agree and 5 – strongly agree) measuring three attitudinal factors (positive and negative attitude and subjective norms) toward plagiarism. Results were presented as score (mean ± SD) followed by reference range (divided in three equal parts: low, moderate and high score). Score range expends from 12 to 60 (low: 12-28; moderate: 29-45; high: 46-60) measuring positi- ve attitude toward plagiarism, from 7 to 35 (low: 7-16; moderate: 17-26; high: 27-35) measuring negative attitude toward plagiarism and from 10 to 50 (low: 10-23; moderate: 24-37; high: 38-50) measuring subjective norms. Response rate was 99% (N = 144). Results: Results revealed moderate positive attitude (36 ± 7) and subjective norms (32 ± 6) toward plagiarism and moderate to high negative attitude (26 ± 4). Plagiarism is perceived as not very important (63% of students), harmless (59%), justified under special circumstances (42%), and sometimes necessary (35%). Conclusion: Students’ attitudes reflect insufficient level of seriousness and awareness with which plagiarism is perceived. They are lacking knowled- ge on scientific methodology, academic and scientific misconduct. Plan and program to educate students about academic integrity and research methodology is required on all educational level. Key words: plagiarism; academic misconduct; students; questionnaires Received: July 1, 2010 Accepted: September 10, 2010 Attitudes toward plagiarism among pharmacy and medical biochemistry students – cross-sectional survey study Vanja Pupovac 1* , Lidija Bilic-Zulle 1,2 , Martina Mavrinac 1 , Mladen Petrovecki 1,3 1 Department of Medical Informatics, Rijeka University School of Medicine, Rijeka 2 Clinical Department of Laboratory Diagnostics, Clinical Hospital Centre, Rijeka 3 Department of Clinical Laboratory Diagnosis, “Dubrava” Clinical Hospital, Zagreb *Corresponding author: vpupovac@medri.hr Introduction Scientific and professional work in the field of bio- medicine requires great responsibility, total com- mitment and serious and honest lifetime work and learning. Unprofessional behaviour such as scienti- fic misconduct can directly provoke mistakes and seriously damage people’s health and even life (1,2). Knowing the importance of scientific work and the possible repercussions it could have on people’s lives, one can presume that all resear- chers have high moral values and strong scientific integrity and that occurrence of scientific miscon- duct is very rare (3). It would be logical to deduce that also students who want to undertake this pro- fession also have same integrity and moral values. But is it true? Published papers and reports revea- led that it was not always the case; scientists are not more honest that average people and stu- dents seem to seek “shortcuts” in their work (4-13). Scientific misconduct is usually recognized as fa- brication and falsification of data and plagiarism (1,14,15). Besides that academic misconduct repre- sents various dishonest behaviours that are basi- cally cheating e.g. gaining undeserved benefits. If that behaviour is tolerated that seriously damages