For the second time in under a year, a reporter at the Washington Post has been accused of plagiarism and has faced disciplinary action because of it.

In August of last year, the journal of Microfluidics and Nanofluidics retracted a 2010 article entitled “Induced-Charge Electrokinetic Phenomena” by a University of Waterloo professor Dongqing Li and a PhD student, Yasaman Daghighi. The grounds for the retraction was plagiarism, specifically the misappropriation of text and data.

In Poland, a Catholic priest and a Professor at the University of Lublin is facing accusations that he plagiarized portions of a volume he wrote entitled, “The Evolution of Polish Church Law Until the 19th Century in the Light of Codification.”

As a wrap up of 2012, the Jonah Lehrer scandal will, most likely, be the most-remembered plagiarism and ethics scandal of the year. It was the scandal that brought down one of the world’s best-known science reporters and authors while also opening up the debate about the ethics of self-plagiarism in a way that had not happened before.

When it comes to the ethical issues that face writers, self-plagiarism is one of the most difficult and hotly-debated topics out there. Not only are there tremendous disagreements as to what self-plagiarism is, many don’t agree that it exists at all.

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Plagiarism Ruling Under Scrutiny

First off today, Natalie Stechyson of The Windsor Star is reporting on a Supreme Court case in Canada that is raising questions about when and if it is acceptable for a judge to plagiarize his or her rulings. The case centers around a family that filed suit against a hospital after a complication with a birth left their child severely brain damaged. The family sued the hospital and the trial court awarded them $4 million in damages. However, upon evaluation of the judge’s decision, it was found that the trial judge had lifted some 321 paragraphs (out of 368) near-verbatim and without attribution from submissions from the applicants (plaintiffs). Lawyers for the hospital appealed the ruling, claiming that the level of copying indicated that the judgment did not represent the judge’s analysis. The appeals court agreed with that and rejected the judgment, prompting the family’s lawyers to file a petition with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of Canada heard the matter on Tuesday, November 13, 2012 but the ruling is not expected immediately.

Eric Hoppe, Content and Product Manager at Constant Content, one of the Internet's largest  and most established marketplaces for SEO friendly content, spoke to iThenticate about its reasons for implementing a stringent plagiarism screening process into its editorial review.