When looking at plagiarism in politics, it’s easy to be floored by the spate of recent scandals, especially in Germany and Eastern Europe. It seems as if politician after politician are having their degrees revoked and/or are being forced to resign over plagiarism, often times involving dissertations written decades earlier.

Ten years ago, the journalism world was in upheaval. On May 1, 2003, Jayson Blair, a young reporter at The New York Times, turned in his resignation following allegations of plagiarism made a couple of days earlier. The Times began to deeply investigate Blair’s work and, May 11th, less than two weeks later, released its findings in a mammoth “Correcting the Record” piece.

Pseudo Journals and Fake Banks, What Publishers Can Learn

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France’s Top Rabbi Gilles Bernheim Quits in Plagiarism Row

First off today, The BBC is reporting that France’s Grand Rabbi, Gilles Bernheim, has resigned his post amid a scandal that has him not only facing allegations of plagiarism but also allegations of lying on his resume. The scandal began in early April when Bernheim was forced to admit that his book, “Quarante Méditations Juives” (Forty Jewish Meditations), contained several plagiarized passages in it. However, Bernheim, who also had to admit to lying about his educational qualifications, refused to resign from his post, saying that to do so would be a dereliction of duty. He also claimed that the plagiarism was from an assistant or ghostwriter that helped him compile the work. However, the scandal refused to die down. Eventually, members of the Central Consistory of France, the governing body for Jewish organizations, held an emergency meeting in Paris, during which he resigned. According to the Consistory, Bernheim recognized his faults, offered apologies and gave explanations. Prior to his appointment to the position of Grand Rabbi in 2009, Bernheim was rabbi at the largest synagogue in Paris.

What would you do if, while reviewing papers written by scholars, you repeatedly found papers to contain around 30% of unattributed, copied work? How would you handle working with these scholars? How would you protect your institution/organization from being associated with such plagiarism? This is a similar situation that Sarah S., subcontractor for USAID, found herself in. Having worked extensively with researchers, particularly from developing countries, Sarah was put to the test to mitigate risks by educating scholars about plagiarism and ethical issues, and using iThenticate plagiarism detection software. Sarah spoke to me about her experiences in this exclusive interview.

What are the greatest threats to the integrity of scholarly publishing? What are the biggest ethical concerns of editors in reviewing research and working with researchers? In order to take a deeper look into these questions and potentially find answers, iThenticate conducted a survey (called "Editors and Ethics") to over a hundred people in an editorial role. With the goal of learning more about the attitudes and types of challenges that editors and editorial staff are having with ethical conflicts and other pressing issues, the results of the survey revealed some very interesting insights.

A recent article in the Ottawa Citizen highlighted the strange case of Veldon Coburn, a PhD candidate who is also an analyst at Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada in Gatineau.

Famed primatologist Jane Goodall was scheduled to release her new book “Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants” on April 30th, however, following a Washington Post article that found a dozen unattributed passages in the book, the book’s publisher, Grand Central, has announced that it is holding the book back until it can “correct any unintentional errors.”

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NSF Audit of Successful Proposals Finds Numerous Cases of Alleged Plagiarism

First off today, Jeffrey Mervis of Science Magazine writes that the National Science Foundation (NSF) recently performed an audit of proposals it had accepted funding for in 2012 and, in doing so, discovered nearly 100 cases of alleged plagiarism. The NSF is an independent Federal government institution and is responsible for funding about 20% of all Federally-supported government research at universities. The audit, which only looked at proposals that were funded, found that between 1 and 1.5 percent of all accepted proposals had some degree of plagiarism in it. According to the NSF’s Inspector General, Allison Lerner, the organization’s six investigators are “swamped” trying to handle the influx of new investigations. Lerner also testified before the House of Representatives Science Committee saying that, extrapolated across all the 45,000 proposals the NSF receives annually, some 1,300 could contain plagiarism and another 450 to 900 could have problematic data. The NSF has not announced what action it may be taking against the proposals that were found to have unattributed content. However, plagiarism, along with falsification and fabrication, is recognized as research misconduct. To date, the NSF has issued 120 findings of research misconduct and, according to Lerner, “more than 80%” involved plagiarism.