There are various means of measuring a researchers’s level of success in their field of expertise. Tallying the number of published papers is certainly one of them. Counting how many times each of those papers has been cited in credible journals is another. The problem with each of these methods is that, if you look at the cumulative totals of published works or citations, neither is really an accurate depiction of the quality of work being done by one individual or group. It was for that reason that the h-index, a formula that takes both of these factors into account, was developed.

Featuring: Suma Ramachandran, Editor, Amba Research

The United States Office of Research Integrity (ORI), in an effort to maintain tighter controls on plagiarism in the scientific community, recently ruled that Gerald Lushington, the director of bioinformatics at Kansas University in Lawrence, was guilty of plagiarism and research misconduct for not reporting a case of plagiarized material he had spotted in a research paper. His associate director, Mahesh Visvanathan, the person who submitted the plagiarized work, was also censured for misconduct.

With access to written work at the fingertips of millions of people online, instances of plagiarism have dramatically risen in recent years. Many bloggers and social media voices are unaware of how (or why) to give proper attribution to the original author or source. Ideas on how to do so have been considered over the years -- e.g. inline source links -- for how to ensure that authors receive credit for their work, but none have been completely effective in citing the original source.

As with most infractions – intentional plagiarism isn’t often a singular event.  If someone plagiarizes and gets away with it, they are very likely to do it again because no negative reinforcement has emerged to block their actions.  In fact, they are rewarded by their actions because they end up doing less work and getting all the credit for it.

A Growing Industry. A Growing Problem. The misconduct of a single researcher can have an expansive and costly impact on organizations and the public – ranging from lawsuits to lost grant money to misdiagnosis.