iThenticate Blog

Providing a complete, accurate and clear account of conducted research studies in scientific publications is an integral part of responsible research. Yet the literature is full of examples documenting inadequacy of health research reporting: non-publishing whole studies or selecting only some outcomes for publication with ‘attractive’ results; inadequately described methods and interventions preventing their assessment and replication; confusing or misleading presentation of results, data, graphs, images; or inadequate reporting of harms, which in particular can have serious consequences for patients’ safety. These and other reporting problems undermine reliability of published research and seriously limit usability of presented findings in clinical practice and further research; this decreases returns from huge financial investments into the health research and wastes involvement of human participants in such studies.

Dr. Iveta Simera, Head of Programme Development for the EQUATOR Network, recently connected with iThenticate to delve into key ethical issues in health research. The EQUATOR Network, which stands for Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research, and is hosted by the Centre for Statistics in Medicine at Oxford University, focuses on providing guides for editors and researchers to help improve the quality and accuracy of medical research reporting.

During this 20-minute interview, hosted by Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism Today, Simera highlights ethical issues in medical research today, explores the adeptness of current extrajudicial process for addressing ethical issues, and suggests steps that journals, authors and or/editors could take to help improve the quality of reporting of medical research.

The Internet has opened up countless new avenues of both creative and scientific collaboration. It is now possible for two people to work together to create something new without either of them having to see or even be aware of the other person. Best of all, this can be done with permission and within the bounds of both law and ethics.

What if you could access experiments from some of the world's premier research labs with the click of a button? Or collaborate with scientists all over the world even if you've never met? In this video chat, Elizabeth Iorns, cancer biologist and co-founder of Science Exchange, gives us the scoop on how this open marketplace is transforming research methodologies and boosting reproducibility. Hear Iorns' views on how increasing collaboration may lead to greater transparency and integrity, and less misconduct in scientific research.

In comparison to 2012, 2013 was a very busy year for plagiarism-related news. It was a year with a slew of political scandals, developing issues in research plagiarism and even a few beloved celebrities finding themselves caught up in allegations of unethical writing.

However, much of the focus changed in 2013. Where 2012 was very journalism-oriented with the “Summer of Sin” and Jonah Lehrer, 2013 was much more diverse and featured plagiarism scandals from a variety of fields including politics, religion and filmmaking.

All in all, this made it very difficult to pick just five stories to cover. This list easily could have been a top 20 or more. However, the below were the five plagiarism scandals that had everyone talking in 2013 and will be remembered for a long time to come.

Top 5 Plagiarism Scandals of 2013

While peer reviewing a manuscript, post-doctoral fellow Costas Lyssiotis at Weill Cornell discovered an instance of plagiarism -- his own work appearing in the paper. To confirm his suspicions, he used iThenticate to screen the paper and identify the original sources. In what way was it plagiarized, and how was it handled? Watch this short video to hear the full story.

Watch the discussion (6:23 minutes):

A Researcher's Perspective: There Should Be Zero Plagiarism in Research

One of TaxAudit's core values, particularly in its education department, is integrity. Though plagiarism may often be accidental, an incident, depending on the level of severity, could damage a company's reputation. To prevent such incidents, TaxAudit.com has integrated iThenticate into its educational and marketing editorial processes. Their director of communications discusses their reasons for using plagiarism detection software more in-depth in the following video.