Zhang Xin-xin, Huo Zhao-lin, Zhang Yue-hong
Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE (A/B/C), 38 Zheda Road, Hangzhou, 310027, China.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2014 Jun;20(2):433-43. doi: 10.1007/s11948-013-9460-5. Epub 2013 Aug 30.
In papers in areas such as engineering and the physical sciences, figures, tables and formulae are the basic elements to communicate the authors' core ideas, workings and results. As a computational text-matching tool, CrossCheck cannot work on these non-textual elements to detect plagiarism. Consequently, when comparing engineering or physical sciences papers, CrossCheck may return a low similarity index even when plagiarism has in fact taken place. A case of demonstrated plagiarism involving engineering papers with a low similarity index is discussed, and editor's experiences and suggestions are given on how to tackle this problem. The case shows a lack of understanding of plagiarism by some authors or editors, and illustrates the difficulty of getting some editors and publishers to take appropriate action. Consequently, authors, journal editors, and reviewers, as well as research institutions all are duty-bound not only to recognize the differences between ethical and unethical behavior in order to protect a healthy research environment, and also to maintain consistent ethical publishing standards.
在工程和物理科学等领域的论文中，图表、表格和公式是传达作者核心思想、研究过程和结果的基本要素。作为一种计算文本匹配工具，CrossCheck无法对这些非文本元素进行操作以检测抄袭行为。因此，在比较工程或物理科学论文时，即使实际上发生了抄袭行为，CrossCheck也可能返回较低的相似度指数。本文讨论了一个涉及相似度指数较低的工程论文抄袭案例，并给出了编辑在如何处理该问题上的经验和建议。该案例表明一些作者或编辑对抄袭缺乏理解，并说明了让一些编辑和出版商采取适当行动的困难。因此，作者、期刊编辑、审稿人以及研究机构都有责任不仅要认识到道德和不道德行为之间的差异，以保护健康的研究环境，还要保持一致的道德出版标准。
