iThenticate Blog

Plagiarism in journalism is nothing new, but it’s rare that the integrity of a newsroom as large and respected as the Chicago Tribune is questioned. On July 13th, the revered Windy City periodical ended their relationship with Journatic, an outsourced news agency, after discovering that quotes from both the Deerfield Review and Patch.com had been used in Tribune articles in the month of June. In a statement released Friday morning, the Tribune stated that it will now rely on its regular staff and “trusted freelancers” to provide the local news Journatic had been supplying them with.

In 2011, The Scientific World Journal was excluded from the annual Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports for being an accomplice in a ‘citation cartel.’  Phil Davis over at the Scholarly Kitchen first uncovered evidence against the Scientific World Journal for excessive self-citation practices along with two other journals that shared common board members: Cell Transplantation and Medical Science Monitor.

Two topics from the latest issue of the Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) newsletter, “Ethical Editing” resonated with me -- self-plagiarism and retractions. Since the iThenticate blog has covered both of these topics in depth this past year, I wanted to share some new and additional perspectives on these topics with our readers. Thanks go out to COPE for their permission to share their insights concerning ethical writing!

Self-plagiarism has been an elusive subject for many. How can one steal material from oneself? Jonah Lehrer is an excellent example of how a writer can fall into this plagiaristic behavior. Mr. Lehrer is a renowned author who has published in Wired, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker. He had recently taken a position of staff writer at the New Yorker (Silverman, 2012).

We recently caught up with plagiarism expert, Jonathan Bailey of CopyByte and Plagiarism Today. Bailey provides consultation to writers, attorneys, researchers and anyone who needs advice on plagiarism, content theft and copyright issues. In this interview, Jason Chu of iThenticate asks Bailey about his thoughts on the repercussions of self-plagiarism, and how it can be avoided.

The Nigerian High Court this week set a date to hear plagiarism charges levied against Lamido Sanusi, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. The charges are being brought forward by a Nigerian lecturer in the United States, Professor Victor Dike of the School of Engineering and Technology at the National University of Sacramento in California. Dike, the founder of California’s Centre for Social Justice and Human Development, claims that Sanusi plagiarized his material in lectures on two different occasions.

Yet another case of plagiarism surfaced in European politics recently, when Romania’s newly appointed Education and Research Minister Ioan Mang was accused of copying the work of others in several of his academic papers. This latest incident follows closely on the heels of the resignation of Hungarian President Pal Schmidtt, and is barely a year removed from the plagiarism scandal that forced German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg out of office.

In this age of political hostility and partisan sniping, it’s difficult to tell which news you hear is accurate and which is merely one side trying to discredit the other. It’s difficult to find a time in US history when two parties have been so far apart in their ideologies. Ammunition for both parties now regularly includes digging up instances of plagiarism from the past to discredit opposing political candidates.  Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren found out recently that old and irrelevant publications could come back to hurt her.

With the rise of plagiarism checker technology over the past decade, scholarly misconduct allegations are at an all time high within the scientific, technical and medical research community. These uncovered cases have led to serious concerns about the damages caused by plagiarism and other forms of misconduct. To help put the issues into perspective, iThenticate has created a visual infographic. An extension of the recent iThenticate report, True Costs of Research Misconduct, this infographic illustrates the growing trouble with plagiarism and other forms of research misconduct, and the types of damages that are incurred.

In a recent case at Arizona State University, Professor Matthew Whitaker appeared to have committed plagiarism, but an ASU investigative committee declared that his actions were “unintentional carelessness” instead of “systematic or substantial plagiarism.” The ruling did not sit well with many members of the academic community, including ASU professor Monica Green, who resigned her position in protest over the decision.