After three years of testing, the American Meteorological
Society (AMS) announced in February that they will use the CrossCheck
anti-plagiarism software to screen all submissions to AMS journals.
Authors may already be familiar with CrossCheck if they’ve
published with the American Geophysical Union (AGU). AGU began its CrossCheck
implementation in 2010 with two journals, and soon thereafter integrated it for
all manuscript submissions. IEEE also began using CrossCheck in 2012 for all
prospective content.
In order to minimize variability in
interpretation of the CrossCheck results, the AMS established a subcommittee to
develop a set of standards and guidelines for plagiarism and self-plagiarism
for AMS journal submissions. Plagiarism consists of the fraudulent use of
another’s work or ideas and claiming them as your own or without a proper
citation. In addition, the AMS also wants to address the growing issue of
self-plagiarism. An article from the Association of College & Research
Libraries called “Self-plagiarism Perspectives
for Librarians” (Rosenzweig and Schnitzer) defines self-plagiarism
as,
“Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs
when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published
work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from
getting an identical paper published in multiple journals, to salami-slicing,
where authors add small amounts of new data to a previously published
paper.”
A brief excerpt from each of the newly clarified policies can be found
below. For the entire article on AMS Policy on Plagiarism and
Self-Plagiarism, please see the AMS website.
1. On extent: “Duplication of technical
words and phrases from other source material amounting to less than a sentence
shall not be construed as plagiarism, in general.”
2. On lengthy or block quotes: “Directly
quoted material surrounded by quotation marks or indented as block quotes and
cited to the original source is not considered plagiarism.”
3. On citing conference, gray literature, or
otherwise non-peer-reviewed work: “Duplication from a non-peer-reviewed
source, provided that it was written by one of the authors of the
submission...will not constitute plagiarism, in general”
4. On changes and duplication:
“Duplication of unquoted text (either cited or uncited)- even if the similar
text includes changed verb tense, different numerical values, and the use of
synonyms, for example-is generally considered to be plagiarism”
5. On self-plagiarism: “Self-plagiarism
occurs when substantial amounts of text previously published by the same author
are used without citation and without quotation.” Authors should:
a. “appropriately
cite the original source to promote the primacy of the source”
b. “indicate
that the text largely follows directly from that source”
6. On AMS editors: AMS editors maintain
the right to determine the next course of action. They can decide when the
manuscript needs to be rejected outright with no opportunity for resubmission, author
notification with revision requirements, or another course of action.
For further reading:
IEEE CrossCheck Information Page:
Case Report: AGU’s Use of CrossCheck:
CrossCheck powered by iThenticate:
What is Plagiarism?
http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/what-is-plagiarism/