several sentences in a row or full paragraphs) of a submitted paper with the text of a prior publication, the paper is immediately returned, without review, to the authors with a notification of the duplication.
When the BMM editorial staff are alerted to the similarity in whole passages (i.e. IOPP is a member of CrossCheck ( ), a plagiarism detection service that employs iThenticate to compare text in a submitted manuscript with published manuscripts from more than 50 publishers.
VT ITHENTICATE SOFTWARE
Another text comparison software package with a similar purpose is iThenticate ( ). eTBLAST compares text submitted by the user to the full text of previously published papers in several databases, including PubMed. One such software package is eTBLAST ( ), which is a free web-based service of The Innovation Laboratory at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Blacksburg, VA, USA. And now, with software widely available to check the similarity of text of a new paper with that of all prior publications, copied text can be readily detected, placing the reputations of the authors in jeopardy. ownership of, all text as well as all other content of the paper. In accepting the conditions for publication of their work in BMM or most other journals, authors sign a Transfer of Copyright agreement that assigns exclusively to the publisher the worldwide copyright to, i.e. But, of course, while seemingly innocuous, unless quotation marks are inserted around the passage and a reference citation is included, this is not an acceptable practice. And there are times when a sentence or two or three from the introduction or discussion of a paper have been so well crafted to capture the subject, that it seems a shame not to use the text in a subsequent manuscript on a similar topic. This practice may seem particularly innocuous when the text is that which describes experimental methods. It is when authors copy text from the introduction, materials and methods, and/or discussion sections from one of their papers for use in another. But there is another form of copying/duplication that is much more prevalent. But even with these safeguards in place, and the attendant vigilance of referees, it continues to be you, the reader, who is the final arbiter of the veracity of a published scientific paper.įortunately, plagiarism, particularly involving unauthorized and non-credited use of previously reported data from investigators other than those taking credit for the work, is exceedingly rare. To ensure that this is the case, IOPP has taken all steps possible including the use of the newest text screening software. Moreover, Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP) will be implementing the publication of future articles in BMM in an enhanced HTML format as an additional convenience for readers.īMM remains ever attentive to maintaining the highest standards in publishing work principally focused on biomaterials for use in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, including assurance that the papers represent unpublished and unbiased work. And as we look ahead to 2012, highlights include focus issues on 'Injectable Hydrogels for Tissue/Organ Repair', guest edited by J A Burdick, and 'Biomaterials in Translational Regenerative Medicine', guest edited by A Atala and S J Lee. The importance of the papers published this past year is demonstrated in part by the increase in the number of downloads, from an average of 126 downloads per article in 2010 to 226 in 2011. As we reflect on the past year, we applaud the efforts of the contributing authors and of the editorial staff, Editorial Board, and referees of Biomedical Materials (BMM), which have resulted in an increase in the journal's Impact Factor to 2.467.