Thank you, Teacher. In "other peoples'" words! A study of thesis acknowledgement sections

Background. Thesis work is an integral part of medical postgraduate education in India. However, despite producing a large number of theses every year, only a tiny percentage of this research makes its way to standard medical journals around the world. One reason for this is the relative lack of novelty, innovation, and imagination in this research. Methods. We looked at the acknowledgement sections of 63 medical thesis manuscripts from 4 different colleges. By comparing the acknowledgement passages penned by the researchers, we assessed the extent of plagiarism/ paraphrasing in the sentences and phrases used. Results. The extent of plagiarism and paraphrasing was surprisingly high. The extent of reproduction ranged from 12% to 63%. Conclusion. The lack of inventiveness and originality in framing individual-specific thank-you notes often leads students to plagiarize or paraphrase sentences from previous manuscripts. However, this might also reflect the fact that the number of reasonable ways to thank one's thesis supervisor is far smaller than the number of theses.