Quantcast
Channel: Comments for Scholarly Open Access
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10802

Comment on Is the Editor of the Springer Journal Scientometrics indifferent to plagiarism? by Miguel Roig

0
0

I’m with Ashley on this one. Over the years I have given workshops on avoiding plagiarism and other questionable writing practices to students, postdocs, and faculty from across the full spectrum of the sciences and I am continuously amazed at the extent to which some researchers are misinformed about fundamental rules of scholarship. I suppose that it is sometimes (and I mean very few times) understandable when these types of misunderstandings are the result of unfamiliarity with Western scholarly traditions (e.g., citation, paraphrasing/summarizing, quotation) that in most English-speaking nations are typically introduced in secondary schools and later refined in tertiary schools and with further training. But, I am really at a loss to explain these types of misunderstandings in those who should know better. The rules of scholarship are rather simple: When using others’ verbatim text, such text must be enclosed in quotation marks (or if the quoted material is substantial one uses block quotation, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_quotation) and a citation must also be provided. If others’ material (i.e., idea/s) is to be paraphrased and/or summarized, an author must thoroughly rewrite that material in a way that his ‘writing voice’ shows in the new work and a citation to the original work must be included. Yes, writing scientific articles presents some challenges for authors in the hard sciences because of the technical nature of the language used, particularly in Methods sections. So, for example, the plagiarism definition used by the US Office of Research Integrity allows for the “limited use of identical or nearly-identical phrases which describe a commonly-used methodology or previous research” (http://ori.hhs.gov/ori-policy-plagiarism). This type of flexibility is built in because, as some have pointed out in this forum, rewriting of technical descriptions can run the risk of altering the original meaning. But notice: “limited use of identical or nearly-identical phrases”. Phrases are not sentences and sentences are certainly not paragraphs. Some editors allow for greater freedom of reuse of one’s own work (reuse of one’s own previously published methods section) or perhaps of even others’ work, but if this is so, this flexibility must be communicated in the journal’s instructions to authors. If those allowances are not made explicit then the standard rules outlined above should be assumed to be in operation. To not follow them in this day and age is a risk not worth taking.

PS: My icon is not representative of who I am, for I believe myself to be, and others tell me, that I am really a very pleasant guy. :)


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10802

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images