ePublisher Plagiarism Prevention
January 10, 2008
You know, I am just as smart ass here as I am at work when it comes to doing my job the best I can. I demand the training and tools to do my work properly the first time, every time. Maybe that’s anal but I get a promotion every year so I ain’t seen the reason to stop.
If I was an editor for even a small ePublisher I would demand after this whole Cassie Edwards debacle that they provide me with at least some tools to try and prevent plagiarism.
Instead of the current solution which seems to entail crossing the fingers and hoping to not get taken for a ride by some author without an ethical bone in their body. The honor system is not a successful business model.
As great as TII is as a service, it is far too expensive for all but the largest of corporations. There is a real need for a middle-to-low market solution in this area. If you aren’t a university or a very large publisher, you’re kind of resigned to either the “cross your fingers” method you described or punching in parts to Google.
Hopefully this will be an area for improvement soon…
I have bought and setup Microsoft Office for corps before.
It ain’t cheap…
but when you need the right tools there is no excuse in my opinion and it is a business tax write off.
That is exactly what those tax write offs are for.
Plus as an added bonus it is not the only kid on the block there are others.
This is just “top shelf”.
In many cases Google does a pretty good job and there is no excuse for not typing stilted phrases into a free seach engine.
I didn’t take a look at the program but I passed it on to a partner. She said from a skim that this would possibly pull up essays but wouldn’t cover things like the infamous Nora Roberts/Janet Dailey plagiarism where scenes from Nora’s novels were copied. I’d guess that would be the more common scenario, if it is a common scenario.
Well Treva,
It stands to reason that you would be more likely to steal from an old text or an academic work (which this covers) like the recent cases.
I think Janet was an complete brain dead idiot because she stole from someone else current in her same genre which I have no clue how she thought readers would not put two and two together.
I am sure most editors nowadays would catch something that blatant.
This works for the editor to cover the academic side that people research from and might be tempted to cut and paste.