iThenticate Blog

One of the most valuable tools that bloggers and digital content publications use as a source for edits is their user community. When a writer or organization either doesn’t have the resources for a standard editor or can’t cover the sheer volume of published works, they can  turn to their readers to point out grammatical errors, perform fact checking, and even scan content for cases of plagiarism.

Joseph Esposito from the ‘Scholarly Kitchen’ wrote an interesting piece on social media and the evolution of the ‘fixed text.’ He analyzes the newly dynamic nature of the social web; from edits within Wikipedia to comments on a blog to multifaceted posts on Google Plus. Essentially, we are moving away from a time when a piece of content was easily defined, with a convenient start and finish.

A quick Google search for ‘plagiarizing quotes’ or ‘plagiarism of quotes’ yields a plethora of results, however, most of the results are related to quotes about plagiarism.  There is nearly no information out there on plagiarizing quotations; instances where individuals have plagiarized other authors through the use of their quotations.

Original audio broadcast can be found on IASTED.org.  Brandon Hisey from The International Association of Science and Technology for Development (IASTED) and Dan Videtto from iThenticate / iParadigms (former Managing Director) have a discussion on IASTED Live!

The blog, TechDirt, recently published an article titled, “Is Policing Plagiarism at A University As Counterproductive As Trying To Stop Copyright Infringement?”  The article postulates that creating a learning environment based on discovering plagiarism and punishing the culprits can backfire by producing a fearful and ineffective classroom atmosphere.   The author likens this to the back-and-forth battle over copyright infringement between companies and users that often leaves both sides with a bad taste in their mouth; this type of ongoing battle can stifle creativity with an ‘angry us-vs.-them world.’

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with iThenticate customer, Brett Holte, who is the Submissions Services Manager at the Alliance of Crop, Soil, and Environmental Science Societies (ACSESS). Brett gave me insight into their editorial process, describing how it has changed since discovering plagiarism in submitted articles and implementing iThenticate. Mr. Holte also offers his advice to other scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals for preventing plagiarism before publication.

Writers often maintain that because they are the authors, they can reuse their work as they please; it couldn't be defined as "plagiarism" since they are not taking any words or ideas from someone else. However, while the debate on whether self-plagiarism is possible continues, the ethics of self-plagiarism is significant, especially because self-plagiarism can infringe upon a publisher’s copyright.

The practice of commissioning an anonymous writer, or ghostwriter, to do one’s writing has been employed for a number of famous books and papers in the past, including official presidential biographies.  Examples of ghostwriting exist in almost every field – from politics to literature to scientific research.  Ghostwriting is an industry of its own; thousands of people make their living every year by writing anonymously.  Although ghostwriting has been historically accepted, it has been undergoing some criticism recently that it is considered a form of plagiarism.

Written by Kirsty Meddings, Product Manager at CrossRef ---CrossCheck, the plagiarism screening initiative from CrossRef and iParadigms has recently welcomed its 240th publisher and is becoming an established part of the editorial process for many journals. CrossCheck members use the iThenticate plagiarism detection system to screen submitted papers for originality and can quickly tell whether a paper contains passages of text that also appear in other publications or resources.

Senator John Kerry recently made some very controversial statements when speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” segment.