iThenticate Blog

In 2013, plagiarism might, reasonably, seem to be an act of self-destruction. In an era where words can trivially be tracked and searched for, committing an act of plagiarism could easily be mistaken for an act of career suicide rather than a means to improve one’s reputation.

What is the best point to check for plagiarism within a journal's editorial workflow? Sarah McCormack, editorial manager at the American Society for Nutrition (ASN), spoke with us about the types of modifications they have tested in their editorial workflow (to check submitted articles) before settling on the most logical and successful point.

Two years ago, Dr. Ferric C. Fang, editor in chief of Infection and Immunity, discovered that a published author within his journal was guilty of data manipulation.  Infection and Immunity responded by retracting the six papers submitted by Naoki Mori; 24 of Mori’s other papers have since been retracted by other scientific journals.

Three Wiley-Blackwell nursing journals, The Journal of Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, the Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, recently detected cases of plagiarism in published articles written by Professor Scott J.M. Weber, a now former assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing. After investigation, Wiley-Blackwell issued a retraction of seven articles after concluding Weber had liberally borrowed previously published research without attribution.

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!

Marc Hauser, a prominent Harvard psychology professor, recently resigned after being found guilty of scientific research misconduct. Hauser was renowned in the field of evolutionary biology, particularly in regards to his research with animal cognition and neuro-development. His ground-breaking work had previously been featured across numerous scientific publications, books, news articles and television programs.

The past decade has seen a scary increase in the number research paper retractions. The Journal of Medical Ethics published a study last year that examined close to eight hundred retracted research papers.

Many recent trends point to the standard journalistic editorial process getting a major overhaul to streamline and automate publishing.  

In 2006, a congressional report was released that went up against climate change, challenging prior research that pointed to a global warming trend over the past millennium.