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Published online 8 October 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/455715a
Entire-paper plagiarism caught by software
Thousands of 'similarities' found between papers.
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compare these two publications: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTING, VOL. 6, NO. 4, AUGUST 2002 Rafael S. Parpinelli, Heitor S. Lopes,and Alex A. Freitas Abstract?This paper proposes an algorithm for data mining called Ant-Miner (ant-colony-based data miner). The goal of Ant- Miner is to extract classification rules from data. The algorithm is inspired by both research on the behavior of real ant colonies and some data mining concepts as well as principles. We compare the performance of Ant-Miner with CN2, a well-known data mining algorithm for classification, in six public domain data sets. The results provide evidence that: 1) Ant-Miner is competitive with CN2 with respect to predictive accuracy and 2) the rule lists discovered by Ant-Miner are considerably simpler (smaller) than those discovered by CN2. WITH: IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.8 No.7, July 2008 P.V.Sarath Chand, Dr.A.Vinay Babu, Dr.A.Govardhan Abstract ? This work proposes an algorithm for data mining called Ant-Miner (Ant Colony-based Data Miner). The goal of Ant-Miner is to extract classification rules from data. The algorithm is inspired by both research on the behavior of real ant colonies and some data mining concepts and principles. We compare the performance of Ant-Miner with CN2, a well-known data mining algorithm for classification, in six public domain data sets. The results provide evidence that: (a) Ant- Miner is competitive with CN2 with respect to predictive accuracy; and (b) The rule lists discovered by Ant-Miner are considerably simpler (smaller) than those discovered by CN2. The main differences between the two papers are that Parpinelli et al published in an prestigious journal (IEEE) while the IJCSNS is an obscure one, and that the plagiarists "published" a shorter version. This is outrageous! I'm glad there are people watching out so this kind of behaviour doesn't go unnoticed.
If one has never heard of nor read a journal does not by any stretch of the imagination render a journal obscure. There are thousands of journals worldwide. Most are highly specialized with a specific target audience. Its one thing to be inspired by a work or get a few ideas from the presented research: It is theft to steal words verbatim or follow the a presentation's line of thought without crediting the investigators. One who does so may "appear" creative and smart to others but such cleverness cannot always be equated with true intelligence. Another question arises: Did the alledged plagiarist conduct any actual experiments? Such shortcuts to renown eventually are exposed. It is a shameful practice. Then again the practice of cheating on college exams leads to such behavior. The verbally challenged should team up with those that can present their own work in a scientific manner.
I applaud Dr. Garner's efforts to realize that editors often don't act. As I have written on other articles, my former PhD advisor published a paper with whole paragraphs copied from my dissertation. He copied the wrong paragraphs, so results and methods were mixed (see my story later). When I approached the journal's editor upon seeing the draft on their website, he said that he and the guest editor (who founded a company based on the compound which the paper was about), felt my advisor's actions were defensible. I had to file a grievance with my former university to have my content taken out of the paper -- resulting in a very flawed and incomplete paper. Still, the journal keeps the draft on their website, still today. They insist it was merely a dispute, not plagiarism. So I met with the same resistance that Dr. Garner did. ---- Plagiarized Grad Student, PlagiarizedGradStudent@gmail.com, Read my story at http://www.plagiary.org/responses.htm
"Royal Prince Alfred Hospital near Sydney, Australia" That'll be the RPAH *in* Sydney, Australia?
I find it somewhat ironic that you can stir up a plagiarism argument on research that is often funded from public money, and at the same time produce an editorial implying that it is benefical to society in encouraging university research to undermine proprietary intellectual property; private enterprise is the hand that ultimately feeds all research, and perhaps we ought not to bite it?
There is no well defined limit between plegarism and being inspired by others, so it boils down to first whether you can document a previous publication and secondly if it's not obvious if the committee assessing the case is unbiased. Who is the true inventor of an idea? The relativity of time was a concept introduced by Einstein's mentor, not himself, even though Einstein put it in the context of the general theory of relativity. Likewise Darwin was surely not the first to see the resemblance between man and ape, as skeletons where posed next to eachother at museums at the time. The bottom line most probably boils down to whether the authors of a 'new' paper have performed experiments and/or analyses themselves or plainly copied them. A paper without anything new is then not really worth publishing. So I guess you have to be careful who you disclose your ideas to before you have them in print.....
Besides outright plagiarism, I think a lot of the problem is what I call vanity publishing. That is publishing for the sake of publication not information. I see this all the time in the area of reviews which add nothing to the field in terms of originality. Second editors need tools to not only to detect plagiarism but also to check the high throughput datasets they receive which are, in many cases, riddled with inaccuracies. There has been a very poor gearing up by journals in regard to the presentation, accuracy and storage of these datasets.
The Internet has made ?cut and paste? extremely easy, indirectly encouraging plagiarism to a confounding extent. Sadly this unethical practice is an open secret, and has fast become an epidemic. It cuts across a huge spectrum of knowledge pursuers -- from college and university students, to postgraduate researchers and academics. Just that some are more prone to copy others? work full scale without any qualm. This is but yet another form of human cheating, resorting to ugly tricks and most convenient ways to gratify the personal insatiable greed for instant diploma, fame, status, money ? irrespective of the ethnicity or nationality. There is now more reason for research paper reviewers to scrutinize every article with great care, and that each article ought to be properly vet by a panel of highly qualified researchers of similar field, especially when it comes to highly respectable international journals. Of course, the rampant ?cut-paste? college or university assignments can still be quite beyond control. (Tan Boon Tee)
I am a young researcher, starting my career in this field, where your scientific temprament is directly measured to number of papers published. WE must understand the main cause and root of this problem, which is no less than a cancer in this fraternity. There is a tremendous pressure on researchers for quick publication, as their career would be at stake. If we can allow a "moderate" system of strict peer reviewing, perhaps we could see some change in temprament
If we are talking plagiarism in terms of scientific content then that is awfully wrong, but in terms of using the language, I have my reservations there. For example if in an article someone says mary buys fruits everyday and someone else repeats that word verbatim, will that be considered as plagiarism?
plagiarism simply symbolizes horrific and dying need of personal identity and honor...
Ernest Chi Fru wrote: "For example if in an article someone says mary buys fruits everyday and someone else repeats that word verbatim, will that be considered as plagiarism?" No, that wouldn't plagiarism, it would just be wrong. I think you meant to write "Mary buys fruits every day," or perhaps "Mary buys everyday fruits."