Software Finds Plagiarism In Research 111
shmG writes "Researchers from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute have created a seek-and-destroy program — for plagiarism. Called ET Blast, it's designed to find plagiarism in scientific papers. It does a full-text analysis, and then looks for similar publications in several databases. 'We have better literature,' Garner said. 'There are abstracts and full papers, and a database called Crisp, where you compare stuff to every grant the NIH gets. It's compared to any research that's been funded.'"
What about ... (Score:4, Interesting)
What about academic "recycling".
I remember being told a long time ago that some researchers will basically make several permutations of the same paper to submit to a bunch of different places. It's essentially the same paper, with nothing new in it, but if you can get several places to publish it, you can pad out your publications list.
Re:You can't plagiarize yourself [Re:What about .. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's all fine and good, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
... can it find dupes on Slashdot?
Re:You can't plagiarize yourself [Re:What about .. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but maybe the problem is that we don't have a good terms to differentiate between appropriate reuse of one's own writing, and unnaceptable reuse.
For instance, it's a violation of academic ethics to try to publish the exact same paper in multiple places. You're effectively trying to increase your publication count without adding anything new to the body of knowledge. It's still not plagiarism, since it's your own work, but it is unethical.
Not citing previous work when writing a paper is also wrong, though not in the same way. It can be either an honest mistake, lazy, or downright unethical (e.g. not citing the work of someone you don't like). Not citing your own previous work in the area is similarly wrong. Not because it would be plagiarism, but because citations are vital to help others understand the context, significance, and background to the present work. So you should cite yourself when appropriate, just as you would cite others.
And lastly, there are times where re-using your own material is absolutely acceptable. For instance when releasing a new edition of a book, it just makes sense to tweak the things that need changing. It doesn't make sense to rewrite every sentence to avoid 'plagiarizing' yourself. Similarly if you write a review article of a certain field, it just makes sense to re-use some of the text from a previous review (now outdated) that you wrote. (There may or may not be secondary copyright concerns, depending on the various contracts in place.) It isn't plagiarism, and it isn't wrong.
Perhaps academia needs to develop terms to cleanly differentiate between these cases. Or alternately people need to be more specific when they are talking about appropriate vs. inappropriate behavior. Abusing "plagiarism" as a catch-all for "unethical publication" confuses the issue.
Re:plagiarism differs in science vs. English Lit. (Score:4, Interesting)
You seem to be infected by the IP bug.
Fortunately for the rest of us, one cannot plagarize ideas. Reformulating a concept in your own words does not count as plagarism, nor should it.
You seem to be infected by a different sort of IP bug.
Plagiarism is not the same thing as copyright infringement (though it's not uncommon for the same act to involve elements of both). One can plagiarize public domain sources. One can plagiarize ideas.
Plagiarism is what happens when a writer presents other people's work (their words or their ideas) as his own, without giving due credit to the source. Pretending that you thought of something when you're actually just copying another author's reasoning is intellectual dishonesty, and squarely within the realm of plagiarism.
If you copy someone's words verbatim, there is an added obligation to specifically identify the copied passage by blockquoting, using quotation marks, or otherwise clearly setting off the passage from the rest of your writing. If you're just paraphrasing, there's no obligation to use quotation marks (that would be silly) but there remains a need to properly name your source (through footnotes or other means). Rewriting someone else's work in your own words is otherwise still very much plagiarism.
Re:How is this different from Turnitin? (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no harm you have done the required work. Just because you can use your work in more than one place doesn't harm anyone. Assertions to the otherwise are ridiculous.