From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:09:53 -0400

A journal editor friend of a friend points to a blog that tracks
publicized episodes of plagiarism:
http://www.ithenticate.com/plagiarism-checker-blog/

More recently, the blog has carried the story of the third major
European public figure to come a-cropper over plagiarism in recent
months (the others were the rising star German Defense Minister and
the Romanian Prime Minister):

http://www.ithenticate.com/plagiarism-checker-blog/bid/80976/Hungarian-President-Resigns-After-Plagiarism-Accusation

From related conversations, I'm picking up a new set of terms to refer
to ways and means:

* cut-and-paste plagiarism-- the basic technique for copying a passage

* patch plagiarism-- where a document has patches through all or large
parts that are cut-and-pasted in from elsewhere

* whole-cloth plagiarism -- far less frequently found, arrant takeover
of someone else's work and near-identical presentation

* redundant self-plagiarism -- really interesting, the case where
someone writes an article, and when it is run through a
plagiarism-checker (there are various kinds available, and some
journal publishers make them available to editors) it gets flagged --
because the author has been recycling paragraphs and sections of
his/her *own* work in the new piece, even though there's new material
as well

The issues raised are non-trivial, and one may be forgiven for envying
Europeans for having so many leading public figures with doctoral
theses that *could* be plagiarized, but I found this blog a helpful
way of opening my eyes to the issues.  BTW, this colleague noted that
submissions to his society's reputable (applied sciences) journal
experience a significant percentage of the above kinds of problems,
with the exception of the "whole-cloth," which he says has rarely if
ever occurred there.

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown University