Plagiarism Survey: 'Cloning' Is the Most Common Form - theJOURNAL

Leila Meyer

Turnitin, a company that develops plagiarism detection and prevention tools, has released the results of a survey that identifies 10 types of plagiarism and ranks them according to frequency and severity. The survey included educators at the middle and high school and post-secondary levels.

Turnitin assigns a clever name to each of the 10 types of plagiarism to make them easier to understand and discuss. Blatant plagiarism, or the act of copying somebody else's work word-for-word, is called cloning, and according to the educators surveyed, it is both the most common and problematic form of plagiarism.

Two other common and problematic forms of plagiarism are called ctrl-c, work that copies significant portions from a single source without alteration or attribution, and mashup, work that copies material from multiple sources without alteration or attribution.

The survey found the least common forms of plagiarism to be the 404 error, work that includes inaccurate or fictitious citations, and the hybrid, work that includes copied passages with and without citation.

The least problematic forms of plagiarism were found to be the remix, work that paraphrases multiple sources, and the re-tweet, work that uses proper citation but follows the source's original wording and structure too closely.

The report offers educators a number of recommendations for dealing with plagiarism. According to Turnitin, "academic policies too often take the approach of adopting a one size fits all response to plagiarism." The company suggests that severe forms of blatant plagiarism, such as cloning and ctrl-c, may warrant extreme responses, but lesser forms may simply require better education. In some cases, students may be plagiarising unintentionally simply because they aren't aware of the different forms of plagiarism.

Turnitin software provides originality reports that identify problems such as blatant copying, improper paraphrasing, and insufficient citation in student work. The company recommends sharing those reports with the students and using them as a learning tool.

"Nearly every school has an academic integrity policy, yet instructors tell us that blatant, intentional plagiarism is still frequently encountered," said Chris Harrick, vice president of marketing at Turnitin, in a prepared statement. "This study helps educators identify the nuances between the various forms of plagiarism and gives them some insights to effectively address plagiarism with their students."

The complete study is available at turnitin.com.

iThenticate Assesses The Damaging Effects of Research Misconduct

To: BUSINESS, STATE AND TECHNOLOGY EDITORS

New report examines the distinct costs caused by the rise in plagiarism, falsified research and other scholarly misconduct

OAKLAND, Calif., March 13, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Turnitin, creators of iThenticate and the leader in plagiarism prevention, today announced the release of a new report titled, "True Costs of Research Misconduct." The report explores the reasons for the dramatic rise in research misconduct over the past decade and defines four distinct categories of damages caused by research misconduct--individual, brand, capital and human.

To download this free report, visit: http://www.ithenticate.com/research-misconduct-report.

"Research misconduct often creates a ripple effect of costly damages that impacts organizations and the general public--ranging from lawsuits to revoked PhDs to misdiagnosis," said Chris Cross, general manager of iThenticate. "This report calls attention to the importance of establishing preventative measures that will contain a growing and concerning problem."

Due to the growth of the researcher population and a growing pressure to 'publish or perish,' more researchers have taken to cutting corners, resulting in falsified research, fraudulent data, paraphrasing, duplication and blatant plagiarism. Publishers are responding by retracting published research, and implementing more stringent editorial processes and technology solutions.

"If a journal were to be discovered publishing erroneous material, people might think twice about the reputation of that journal," said Benson Honig, a journal editor at Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. "Checking articles through iThenticate prior to submission can protect a journal's reputation and ensure that only top-quality work is being published."

iThenticate helps publishers, researchers and organizations reduce all types of misconduct by comparing manuscripts against the world's largest comparison database--which is comprised of more than 20 billion web pages, and more than 116 million content items, including 30 million published research articles from 283 leading science, technical and medical (STM) publishers. >>>>