Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in the publication of professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions, reproduced in The COPE report 1999:
A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, memoirs, magazine articles, or other written material. Memoir ghostwriters often pride themselves in "disappearing" when impersonating others since such disappearance signals the quality of their craftsmanship. In music, ghostwriters are often used to write songs, lyrics, and instrumental pieces. Screenplay authors can also use ghostwriters to either edit or rewrite their scripts to improve them. Usually, there is a confidentiality clause in the contract between the ghostwriter and the credited author that obligates the former to remain anonymous. Sometimes the ghostwriter is acknowledged by the author or publisher for his or her writing services, euphemistically called a "researcher" or "research assistant", but often the ghostwriter is not credited.
Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted on the Internet is often called "grey literature". Most scientific and scholarly journals, and many academic and scholarly books, though not all, are based on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication. Peer review quality and selectivity standards vary greatly from journal to journal, publisher to publisher, and field to field.
Scientific literature comprises scholarly publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences. Within an academic field, scientific literature is often referred to as the literature. Academic publishing is the process of contributing the results of one's research into the literature, which often requires a peer-review process.
Academic dishonesty, academic misconduct,academic fraud and academic integrity are related concepts that refer to various actions on the part of students that go against the expected norms of a school, university or other learning institution. Definitions of academic misconduct are usually outlined in institutional policies. Therefore, academic dishonesty consists of many different categories of behaviour, as opposed to being a singular concept.
Academic writing or scholarly writing is nonfiction produced as part of academic work, including reports on empirical fieldwork or research in facilities for the natural sciences or social sciences, monographs in which scholars analyze culture, propose new theories, or develop interpretations from archives, as well as undergraduate versions of all of these.
The 2007 dance-pop song "Do It" performed by Canadian singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado features elements plagiarized from "Acidjazzed Evening", a chiptune-style track composed by the Finnish demoscene artist Janne Suni. Timbaland, "Do It"'s producer, admitted to sampling Suni's work, but did not believe his usage constituted "stealing", calling the allegations "ridiculous". Although users had noted the similarities between the two tracks on Finnish demoscene forums in July 2006, the Timbaland plagiarism controversy attracted mainstream attention in January 2007, when Internet users posted videos to YouTube alleging Timbaland had plagiarized Suni's work. Soon afterwards, the controversy attracted the attention of the Finnish news portal eDome, and the MTV and Rolling Stone websites, who all published articles detailing the events of the controversy. "Do It" was released as the fifth North American single from Loose on July 24, 2007.
Plagiarism detection or content similarity detection is the process of locating instances of plagiarism or copyright infringement within a work or document. The widespread use of computers and the advent of the Internet have made it easier to plagiarize the work of others.
Academic authorship of journal articles, books, and other original works is a means by which academics communicate the results of their scholarly work, establish priority for their discoveries, and build their reputation among their peers.
A lack of oversight and a lack of proper training for scientists have led to the rise of plagiarism and research misconduct in India. India does not have a statutory body to deal with scientific misconduct in academia, like the Office of Research Integrity in the US, and hence cases of plagiarism are often dealt in ad-hoc fashion with different routes being followed in different cases. In most cases, a public and media outcry leads to an investigation either by institutional authorities or by independent enquiry committees. Plagiarists have in some cases been suspended, removed or demoted. However, no fixed route has been prescribed to monitor such activities. This has led to calls for establishment of an independent ethics body.
Plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work. In educational contexts, there are differing definitions of plagiarism depending on the institution. Plagiarism is considered a violation of academic integrity such as truth and knowledge through intellectual and personal honesty in learning, teaching, research, fairness, respect and responsibility, and a breach of journalistic ethics It is subject to sanctions such as penalties, suspension, expulsion from school or work, substantial fines and even imprisonment.
EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles to be Published in English were first published by the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) in 2010. Updated versions are periodically released at the EASE Guidelines page of the EASE website. EASE Guidelines summarize the most important editorial recommendations, aiming to make international scientific communication more efficient and to aid in preventing scientific misconduct. They also support the global initiative Healthcare Information For All by 2015 by advising authors to make abstracts of their papers highly informative, reliable, and easily understandable. The document has been translated into many languages, to facilitate its popularization worldwide and help scientists from non-Anglophone countries.
The VroniPlag Wiki is a wiki started 28 March 2011 at Wikia that examines and documents the extent of plagiarism in German doctoral theses.
The Pál Schmitt academic misconduct scandal refers to allegations of plagiarism concerning the 1992 doctoral thesis and the circumstances of the doctoral defence of the President of Hungary Pál Schmitt, which led to Schmitt's resignation from his presidential post. The scandal broke in January 2012, when Hungarian news organizations published a number of articles claiming that about 197 pages of Schmitt's 215-page thesis had been lifted from works by other, foreign scholars, without giving appropriate credit.
Stefan Weber is an Austrian media researcher and writer. The mass media often call him "plagiarism hunter".
PlagTracker is a Ukrainian-based online plagiarism detection service that checks whether similar text content appears elsewhere on the web. It was launched in 2011 by Devellar.
Dănuţ Marcu is a Romanian mathematician and computer scientist, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Bucharest in 1981. He claimed to have authored more than 400 scientific papers.
Dissernet is a volunteer community network working to clean Russian science of plagiarism. The core activity of the community is conducting examinations of doctoral and habilitation theses defended in Russian scientific and educational institutions since the end of the 1990s, and making the results of such examinations known to as many people as possible. The community is composed of professional scientists working in various fields of science both in Russia and abroad, and also journalists, civil activists and volunteers.
PlagScan is a plagiarism detection software, mostly used by academic institutions. PlagScan compares submissions with web documents, journals and internal archives. The software was launched in 2009 by Markus Goldbach and Johannes Knabe.