A survey on the use of CrossCheck for detecting plagiarism in journal articles

The purpose of this survey was to investigate journal editors’ use of CrossCheck, powered by iThenticate, to detect plagiarism, and their attitude to potential plagiarism once discovered. A 22-question survey was sent to 3,305 recipients, primarily scholarly journal editors from Anglophone countries, and a reduced 10-question version to 607 editors from non-Anglophone countries. The response rate was 5.6%. 42% of all respondents had used CrossCheck in their work. The main findings are as follows: (1) the plagiarism detection tool and its similarity report are extremely useful and effective and can assist editors in screening documents suspected of plagiarism; (2) responses show the journal editors’ attitude and level of tolerance towards different kinds of plagiarism in different disciplines; (3) the survey results underscore a clear consensus on editorial standards on plagiarism, but there were small variations between different disciplines and countries, as well as between Anglophone and non-Anglophone. The study also suggests that further work is needed to establish a universal principle and practical approaches to prevent plagiarism and duplicate publication. This survey is part of a research study commissioned by the Committee on Publication Ethics with the aim of developing evidence-based guidance for journal editors on how to deal with different kinds of plagiarism detected through the use of CrossCheck (http://publicationethics.org/resources/research). The two authors contributed equally to this work. © Yuehong (Helen) ZHANG and Xiaoyan JIA 2012 Xiaoyan Jia Yuehong (Helen) Zhang