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.

Journalism is a profession that is currently in a major state of flux.  It’s not hard to see this - just take a look at any major news outlet.  Turn on CNN and you’ll see more Facebook profiles and Twitter handles than you would at a social media tradeshow.  Open the New York Times and everyday you’ll see an increasingly heavier push towards digital subscriptions.