Professor Checks Co-Authored Articles for Plagiarism

Featuring: Davinder Malhotra, Professor of Finance at Philadelphia University

Overview: As an individual author and co-author of articles published in finance and business journals, Davinder Malhotra is careful about screening for plagiarism. To ensure originality and preserve professional integrity, Malhotra uses iThenticate before submitting papers to journal editors.

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iThenticate: Can you tell me a little bit about the Finance Department at Philadelphia University and your professional experience there?

Davinder: We are part of the School of Business Administration here at Philadelphia University and we have five faculty members who are part of Economics and Finance. I have been here at the University since fall of 1993. I joined as Assistant Professor and now I’m full Professor of Finance at Philadelphia University for the last 19 years.

iThenticate: About how many courses do you teach?

Davinder: I have taught almost all of the courses in Finance, but first semester I’m teaching three courses and I teach courses in undergraduate Financial Management. I teach courses in Investment Portfolio Management, Fixed Income Securities, Derivatives, and International Finance. Those are my main courses that I teach.

iThenticate: What is most important to you in plagiarism detection technology?

Davinder: In my research we do a lot of literature review. So, when you read other people’s works, some of the ideas stick in your mind and it is possible that you may be repeating their work or you may be repeating their language in your paper. And I was very concerned that, when I send out these papers out to the editors and the reviewers say that, oh this is actually copied from some other paper; so that would reflect on my professionalism. So, in order to make sure that my work is original, I wanted to make sure that I check my work. So, I came across iThenticate, I started using it and that’s how I’m able to make sure that I’m not even using a single sentence from somebody else’s paper.

iThenticate: Why did you choose iThenticate?

Davinder: There were other programs, but iThenticate was the one which I found easier to use, because all it needed was, I uploaded my file, work, and within literally a couple of minutes, it came back and showed me the match between my work and the other work. And the flexibility that it provides, like it can solve percentage of similarity, like 1% similar, less than 1% similar, less than 3%. That’s pretty effective. And it also gives me the choice to include literature review. So those kinds of options actually I liked when I first used iThenticate, that’s why I keep coming back to using the iThenticate.

iThenticate: And for the papers that you’re using iThenticate for, are you submitting these to finance journals?

Davinder: Yeah. Finance journals, business journals. I can use iThenticate to make sure that even my original work is my original, that it’s not similar to somebody else’s, not even the language, not even the sentence. I work with a lot of co-authors, so sometimes if part of the paper has been written by the co-authors and it allows me actually to authenticate even that particular part.

iThenticate: As far as the results go, have you – has it been helpful?

Davinder: It has been very effective. In fact, many times, students also work with me. So if a student is writing a part of it, it’s very important for me to check the student’s work also, using iThenticate, that they didn’t copy it from someplace else.

The database of iThenticate is very comprehensive, so even those studies, which have not been published, but they have been presented at other conferences – it uses even those to match my work with them. So, I’m able to go back and look at the papers, which were presented, like five years ago. So, when I submit the paper to the journal, I’m pretty confidant that this has not been copied anywhere else. Editors also, if they go back and check it, they also see that it is original work. I know that a lot of journal editors also use this technology to authenticate work. So, it gives me a peace of mind that I don’t have to worry about the authenticity of my work.

iThenticate: Do you see yourself continuing to use iThenticate?

Davinder: Every time I use it, I actually feel better about it, because this is allowing me, as I said, to check my work. It gives me peace of mind – that way, I don’t have to worry about even a single sentence. And when I work with a lot of co-authors, because I work with a lot of people, I don’t have to worry about even them. I cannot go back and ask them whether it was their work, because it’s like it reflects upon them. So, I use iThenticate to make sure that everything is original here and that nothing is taken from somebody else’s work. And it will improve the research quality overall. Because, if others are also using it, the quality will improve significantly because everybody will be doing their own work.