#Ithenticate acceptable similarity index full#
Where the overlap is found to exceed an acceptable level, we write to the author(s) providing a link to the full report and inviting them to withdraw the submission, or alternatively to revise it extensively to reduce the overlap and to indicate where they are quoting the work of others (or their own previously published work).Submissions that appear to include a significant amount of previously published material are investigated further to establish whether that material has been referenced and attributed appropriately.As a matter of routine, the journal now checks all of the work submitted for publication using iThenticate.The editor would welcome the comments of the Forum on this issue.įollowing this incident, the journal has reviewed its policy to detect and discourage plagiarism in submitted work. There remains the question of whether the editors of the other journals in which Dr J has published work should also be informed of this case. In view of the extent of the plagiarism, the decision was also taken to inform the president of his institution. The retraction will be published in the next issue of our journal and on the journal website. Dr J was given a final opportunity to respond and gave the same explanation for the overlap.
In the light of this information, Dr J’s explanation of naivety was considered to be implausible and the decision was taken to retract the published paper. A search using Google Scholar identified that Dr J had published over 20 other papers in different journals since 2005. Typically up to three sources had been plagiarized to contribute up to 63% of the material. iThenticate checks on these revealed similarity indexes between 66% and 77%. In summary, his reply said that: (a) he was building on the work of the earlier authors, (b) he did not understand or mean to do it and (c) he was very sorry and would not do it again.ĭr J had made six other submissions to our journal, all of which had been rejected on the grounds of quality. It appeared that one of the plagiarized papers had been used as a means to improve the quality of the English while the other had provided a framework for the reporting of the statistical results: Dr J had substituted new figures in the running text of the earlier paper.ĬOPE guidelines were followed and a carefully worded letter was sent asking Dr J for an explanation. This check established that the iThenticate report was reasonably accurate. The editor of the journal in which two of the key sources had been published kindly provided copies and the published paper was checked by hand against these two earlier papers. The key issue was the action to be taken about the paper that had already been published. It was clear that the new submission should be rejected.
(It should be noted that this paper was reviewed and accepted before iThenticate was available for checking incoming submissions.) This prompted an iThenticate check of the published paper, which gave a similarity index of 57%, with 45% of the material from three papers by other authors. An iThenticate check indicated a similarity index of 60%: however, the overlap was not from that earlier paper but from another source by a different author which had contributed 41% of the material. Suspicions were raised on 20 September 2012 by a reviewer who commented that some of the passages in a submission from Dr J were similar to an earlier paper published in our journal by the same author.
0 kommentar(er)
