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