daleywhite Academic Publishing, Uncategorized

Originality in Academic Writing: The Blurry Lines Between Similarity, Plagiarism, and Paraphrasing

Across disciplines, most manuscripts submitted to academic journals undergo a plagiarism check as part of the evaluation process. Authors are widely aware of the industry’s intolerance for plagiarism; however, most of us don’t receive any specific education about what plagiarism is or how to avoid it. Here, we’ll discuss what actually constitutes plagiarism, understand the important differences between similarity and plagiarism, and discuss easy strategies to avoid the problem in the first place.

What actually is plagiarism?

The University of Oxford defines plagiarism as “presenting work or ideas from another source as your own… without full acknowledgement.” This is a fairly fundamental definition, and for most of us, this is the extent of our education on plagiarism.

When we think of plagiarism, we usually imagine an author intentionally copying and pasting text from another source. This form of plagiarism, called direct plagiarism, is actually fairly uncommon. More commonly, plagiarism takes the form of:

  • Accidental plagiarism. Citing the wrong source, misquoting, or unintentionally/coincidentally paraphrasing a source that you’ve never seen before is still considered plagiarism, even when done without intent.
  • Secondary source plagiarism. This is an interesting and challenging issue to tackle. This form of plagiarism refers to authors using a secondary source, but citing the works found in that source’s reference list—for example, finding information in a review but citing the initial/primary study instead, not the review itself. This misattribution “fails to give appropriate credit to the work of the authors of a secondary source and… gives a false image of the amount of review that went into research.”
  • Self-plagiarism. There’s still an ongoing debate over the acceptability of reusing one’s own previous work, with differing answers depending on the context. It’s widely agreed that reusing the same figure, for example, in multiple articles without correct attribution to the original publication is unethical; however, it’s less clear whether it’s acceptable to use the same verbatim abstract in a manuscript as you previously published as part of a conference poster. Copyright law can play a major factor in the permissibility of self-plagiarism in niche cases.
  • Improper paraphrasing plagiarism.Some of us have heard from teachers or peers that, to avoid plagiarism, all you need to do is “rewrite it in your own words.” However, this can be misleading, as there’s a fine line between proper and improper paraphrasing. Regardless of the specific language used, if the idea or message being communicated is not your own and is not cited, it’s still plagiarism.

Plagiarism vs similarity

Many publishers, including Elsevier, Wiley, and SpringerNature, perform plagiarism evaluations on all manuscripts they publish by using software iThenticate. However, ‘plagiarism evaluation’ through iThenticate is a bit of a misnomer: iThenticate checks for similarity, not plagiarism. Though the difference between the two is minor, their implications are entirely different.

Whereas plagiarism refers to an act of ethical misconduct, similarity refers to any portion of your paper that recognizably matches text found in previously published literature in iThenticate’s content database. Similarity can include text matches in a manuscript’s references, affiliations, and frequently used/standardized terms or language; it’s natural and nonproblematic, unlike plagiarism.

A similarity report, such as the one generated by iThenticate, is used by editors as a tool to investigate potential concerns for plagiarism. If an iThenticate similarity report flags large sections of text as similar to a previously published article, the editors can then use this as a starting point to evaluate whether the article is, in fact, plagiarized.

Strategies to avoid plagiarism

Being accused of plagiarism—especially direct, intentional plagiarism— can be a serious ethical issue, with long-term implications for your job prospects and career. The best way to avoid this issue is to use preventative measures, such as the ones discussed here.

  1. Educate yourself about what plagiarism truly is and how it occurs. If you’ve made it this far in the article, you’re already making great progress! Consider reviewing the sources cited in this article to continue your education.
  2. Start citing from the note-taking phase. Many times, accidental plagiarism is the result of forgetting the source of an idea or statistic during quick, shorthanded note-taking. To avoid this, start building your reference list from the beginning of your research phase. Consider adding a quick citation for every single line of text—including citing yourself for your own ideas! Reference management software like EndNote and Zotero are great tools for this.
  3. Understand proper and improper paraphrasing. Learn how to correctly paraphrase someone else’s work and the importance of citing your paraphrased text. If you come across a phrase of sentence that perfectly summarizes an idea, don’t be afraid to include it as a direct, cited quotation!
  4. Consider cultural differences in plagiarism policies. This article aligns with the United States’ view of plagiarism as a serious ethical offense. However, this isn’t the case in all countries. In some East Asian countries, for example, the concepts of universal knowledge and memorization to indicate respect leads to a wider cultural acceptance of instances that would be considered plagiarism in America. If you’re unsure about what the expectations are for a certain journal, it’s always recommended to ask the editors.
  5. Use a similarity checker. While a similarity review won’t directly identify plagiarism, it can be great as a final scan for any text you may have copied and pasted with the intention of removing but forgot to erase, and it can help pick up accidental plagiarism! If your institution doesn’t have access to iThenticate, Turnitin, or CrossRef, there are several free similarity scanners available online.
daleywhite Academic Publishing, Sustainability

Current and Future Trends of the Academic Publishing Industry’s Environmental Effects

As the academic publishing industry becomes increasingly cognizant of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and begins to develop best practices for weaving sustainability into our operations, it’s crucial that we acknowledge the environmental effects of our industry. By reviewing those effects along with shifts in the industry, we can project—and influence—our future trajectory toward reduced environmental impact.

Current Environmental Outputs of Scholarly Communications

Anyone involved in scholarly communications knows that we’re currently in a time of rapid change and process development. Print-based academic journals are part of the commercial print sector, and researchers from HP have identified paper waste byproducts resulting from the publication production process as a primary source of its industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. However, over the last twenty years, scholarly publishing has largely shifted toward digital processing and publishing, leading to a complex set of environmental benefits and drawbacks.

Digital publishing and open access are inextricably linked concepts, and there’s much to be said both supporting and criticizing this paradigm shift’s impact on our industry. Digital publishing has massively reduced demand for print versions of materials, from the printed manuscript drafts once mailed to journal editors for evaluation to the finalized journal issues sent to journal subscribers, leading to reduced paper waste. This also results in a reduction in print material mailing/transport emissions and impacts.

These improvements, however, come at the cost of increased email and website use. Though there are doubtlessly many improvements of electronic communication compared with mail—for example, a single email requires around 1.7% of the energy of a single paper letter delivery—there are still consequences to these digital shifts. The physical components of electronics are major contributors to environmental detriment both in their manufacturing requirements and inefficient waste strategies. Data generation and use is also a large area of concern, especially as big data becomes increasingly widespread. This is especially concerning for the academic publishing industry, as big data is rapidly expanding throughout both the research sectors our industry works with and within the scholarly communications industry itself.

Future Trends

As our industry continues to evolve in pace with technological developments and growth in adjacent sectors, such as medical technology and digital publications, we’ll likely continue to see rapid shifts, both in expected and unexpected directions. Here are a few trends we expect will continue to flourish in upcoming years:

Increasing industry recognition and support for of social causes. Recently, many publishers have placed increased focus and attention on diversity and equity in publishing. Relevant industry shifts range from initiatives to improve diverse hiring practices to strategies to financially assist authors from low- and middle-income countries who may not be able to afford rapidly increasing article processing charges, with many publishers offering waivers for qualifying authors. In the last three years, sustainability has become another forefront social issue that publishers are addressing by both promoting awareness and through policy development.

Reduced in-person office presence. Though the industry’s shift toward the work-from-home model was primarily catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the trend toward remote work seems to be here to stay. This results in reduced office space requirements and, conseenergy consumption (air conditioning, lighting, technology, etc) and paper waste products.

Increased research publication focus on climate change. A literature review found that the number of climate change–focused academic journal publications increased over six-fold between 2005 and 2014; in more recent years, research has continued to grow, with the number of publications steadily growing annually since 1997. The more we support systematic, reproducible environmental research, the better we’ll understand our current crisis and opportunities to counteract climate change.

Increased burden of websites/portals. Digital publishing practices aren’t a panacea for our industry’s environmental impacts. Data and websites generate their own carbon emissions and environmental impacts, and as the industry continues shifting toward digital publishing, we must stay aware of the fact that it has its own drawbacks.

Influx in sheer number of publications requires more resources. In today’s current publishing landscape, authors are rewarded for their number of publications, not quality. This has led to a staggering increase in the number of research manuscripts published each year. Each of these publications require resource use, and as the size of our industry expands, so does our environmental impact.

How you can impact scholarly publishing’s environmental effects

If you want to become more involved in our industry’s efforts to promote sustainability, there are several ways to do so:

  1. Research and consider joining the SDG Publishers Compact Fellows. This group acts to support the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals within the publications industry by providing action tips, resources, and policy initiatives.
  2. Direct interested research staff toward the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This group has an open requests for volunteer authors to contribute on research manuscripts through a variety of roles, ranging from lead authors, review editors, chapter scientists, and expert reviewers. There are opportunities for non-researchers, too: IPCC also welcomes technical support unit volunteers, who assist with report preparation, organization, and editing.
  3. Advocate for digital publication, carbon neutrality/offset, and sustainable paper use. By acting as a sustainability champion in your workplace, you can potentially affect your employer’s practices within your team and company-wide. Sustainability initiatives tend to have a domino effect—one small action on your part could lead to industry-wide change!
daleywhite Academic Publishing, Open Access

Open Access: History, 20-Year Trends, and Projected Future for Scholarly Publishing

It’s hard to imagine where the scholarly publishing landscape would be today without open access. As we reach two decades from the inception of open access, it’s important to evaluate how this model has revolutionized research and its potential future directions.

A Brief History of Open Access

1991: The beginning of the open access movement is commonly attributed to the formation of arXiv.org (pronounced ‘archive’), the first widely-available repository for authors to self-archive their own research articles for preservation. ArXiv.org is still widely used for article deposition, with over 2 million articles included in January 2023.

1994: Dr. Stevan Harnad’s ‘A Subversive Proposal’ recommended that authors publish their articles in a centralized repository for free immediate public access, leveraging the potential of the up-and-coming internet and combating the rapidly increasing publication costs and slow speed of print publishing (ie, the ‘serials crisis’). Though this was not the first traceable mention of what would become open access publication, it’s widely considered as the start of an international dialogue between scientific researchers, software engineers, journal publication specialists, and other interested stakeholders.

2000-2010: Open access journals began appearing within the publishing landscape. Throughout the decade, a heated back-and-forth debate persisted between open access proponents and traditional non-OA publishershttps://www.bmj.com/content/334/7587/227.

2001: The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) resulted in a declaration establishing the need for unrestricted, free-to-readers access to scholarly literature. This initiative is considered the first coined use of the phrase ‘open access.’

2003: As a follow-up to BOAI, the 2003 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities expanded upon the definitions and legal structure of open access and was supported by many large international research institutes and universities.

2013-present: Multiple governments have announced mandates supporting or requiring open access publishing, including the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Canada, Spain, China, Mexico, and more.

2018: cOAlition S was formed by several major funders and governmental bodies to support full and immediate open access of scholarly literature through Plan S.

Current State of Open Access

Today, there are four primary submodels of scholarly open access article publishing:

  • Gold: all articles are published through open access, and the journal is indexed by Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The author is required to pay an article processing charge.
  • Green: manuscripts require reader payment on the publisher’s website but can be self-archived in a disciplinary open access archive, such as ArXiv, or an institutional open access archive. A time-based embargo period may be required before the article can be archived. The authors are not required to pay an article processing charge.
  • Hybrid: authors have the choice to publish their work through the gold or green open access models.
  • Bronze: a newer and less common option than gold, green, or hybrid open access, bronze open access means that manuscripts are published in a subscription-based journal without a clear license.

Though open access isn’t yet the default for publishing, it’s a widely available option that’s quickly becoming an expected option for journals. Additionally, research funding bodies are increasingly requiring open access publication as a term for funding, such as the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health.

Since its launch in 2015, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) has risen to the forefront as one of the most comprehensive community-curated lists of reputable open access journals. Unfortunately, however, the rise of open access has also enabled a widespread increase in predatory publishing practices, and counteracting predatory publishers is expected to be a primary focus of future open access development.

Open Access Growth Trends

Before diving into the numbers, it’s important to note that open access reporting is unstandardized. Depending on the databases assessed and definitions of open access, document types, and related terms, the reported number of open access articles per year can differ dramatically between reports. However, overarching trends remain relatively consistent across reports.

In 2018, the European Commision of Research and Innovation, an official research group of the European Union, found that 30.9% of open access publications were open access in 2009, which increased to 41.2% in 2016, then slightly tapered off to 36.2% in 2018. As of 2019, 31% of funders required open access publishing of research, 35% encouraged open access publishing, and 33% embraced no overt policy or stance.

In 2022, the Research Information Observatory partnered with the Max Planck Digital Library and Big Data Analytics Group to compile and publish their data paper, “Long Term Global Trends in Open Access.” Their report found that the percentage of articles that are accessible without paywall subscriptions has increased substantially: around 30% of articles published in 2010 were openly accessible, which jumped to around 50% of articles published in 2019.

Future Expectations and Projections for Open Access