Plagiarism, duplication and institutional publication
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EDITORIAL
Plagiarism, duplication and institutional publication Guy N. Rutty
Published online: 2 October 2007 Ó Humana Press Inc. 2007
Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology has changed again—not in content but in format. One of the pleasures as an academic is to be involved in the development of something right from its conception, through its initial stages of development to the final product and then to assist with the evolution and fine tuning of the product following its launch on to the world market. This is exactly what has happened with this issue of FSMP, in which we see the next developmental stage. Since Springer welcomed Humana Press into its publishing house the journal has undergone some re-adjustments. This has lead to some delays in manuscript possessing and the delay of publication of issue 2.4. However those days are over and we move forward with a new publication team. The format of the page layout has changed in line with other Springer journals although the key elements and educational slant remains in place. The on-line submission system ‘‘Jasper’’ has been replaced by ‘‘Springer-link’’, an altogether much more user-friendly system which authors and reviewers alike will find simpler and more efficient to use. And with 3.2 we introduce Springer On-Line first, pre-publication e-publication. Thus the inevitable delay incurred with traditional hard copy print will to the authors’ delight be removed by rapid e-publication. Since the days when I first started publishing, I have become enlightened into some of the practises that occur within the publishing world and how a small number of authors from time to time abuse and manipulate the system. I knew that this might happen but naively assumed that it did not. It saddens me to see this practice and feel that the
G. N. Rutty (&) Forensic Pathology Unit, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK e-mail: [email protected]
processes discussed below must be stamped out. But how do we address these matters? This is not as easy as it seems and it comes down to the individual editors of the journals, who take responsibility for the material published, to address the problems promptly and with vigour. At times a firm editorial stance must be taken even if that means that manuscripts might be withdrawn by disgruntled authors. Within education of all types the overriding concern at the moment, due to universally easy access to the Internet, is plagiarism—the passing off of someone else’s work as your own. Whilst I have not experienced this in our journal submissions, I am aware in personal communication with some journal editors that others allegedly have. Nowadays, however, we do have a tool that can assist in these matters. FSMP has decided to adopt a similar system as Universities use to check for plagiarism such as Turnitin. This is an Internet based system by which the submitted manuscripts are checked against previously published works and documents. Another system designed to uncover plagiarism is even used to check medical job applications using t
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