The Nature journal has reported that two research scientists at the University of Texas in Dallas - Dr. Harold Garner and Dr. Mounir Errami - have developed an online search engine that curbs "questionable publication practices". By deploying its new eTBLAST programme, the duo has managed to pinpoint 70,000 papers on biomedical paper repository Medline that are highly similar. As per their estimates, over 200,000 duplicate papers are likely to exist on Medline alone.
Recent surveys have reported lesser than 1,000 reported cases of duplication over the past six decades. While it is wrong to categorise every duplicate under plagiarism, the Texas university researcher believe that a sizeable number of plagiarists do exist. They have copied the duplicates spotted by them on to Deja Vu, an open access database. From here, plagiarism detectives can examine the various journals and essays and take requisite action.
Dr. Garner and Dr. Errami, writing in Nature journal under the title 'A tale of two citations', have said that their aim is to separate the duplicates from the original works. According to them, this is imperative in the current context, as science publishing is at a record high. They have termed copying, co-submission and duplication as the three main problems of today's publishing. However, they are quick to condone and support certain types of repeated publications, such as errata, clinical-trial updates and conference proceedings.
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