Article by Darcy Laszewski
Next to truth, originality forms the basis for journalistic integrity. With the advent of the Internet for a good portion of research, the ability to “cut-and-paste” during the writing process sends many writers closer to teetering on the edge of plagiarism. Plagiarism can occur inadvertently and many publishers and website content managers are keenly aware of this fact.
Companies like Writers Research Group that depend on delivering original articles to their clients have turned to iThenticate as a way to quickly discover if the content of an article is too closely matching a published work on the Internet. Additionally, companies that want to safeguard their published works have found that iThenticate is a valuable weapon in their arsenal against plagiarism.
According to Karen Tingle, Chief Executive Officer of Writers Research Group, “Using iThenticate has become a key marketing point for our company. Our editorial staff checks hundreds of pages of content a day and not only identifies what sentences are too closely matching other content, but also links directly to the source to more closely evaluate the possibility of plagiarism. The iThenticate software generates a report that can be forwarded to a writer by e-mail if the article’s content needs to be reworded.”
Writers Research Group’s editor staff reports that the document management features of iThenticate make it easy to use. The program archives all iThenticated documents by title and author, and allows the user to organize them in folders by date, author, project or other criteria.
Those of us who spend a lot of time using the Internet for research routinely see websites with the exact same article published in two or more places. You can’t help but wonder whether the original publisher is aware of this. Publishers and companies that are concerned about others illegally reproducing published works are finding peace-of-mind with iThenticate’s online service. After logging onto iThenticate, the published work is uploaded or pasted into the iThenticate program. In less than a minute, iThenticate checks whether a published work, or any portion of it, appears elsewhere online.
With the explosion of blogs, self-promotion websites, social networking and texting, the written word may be taking the lead over verbal communications. Although the sheer volume of information on the Internet may make it easier to plagiarize and conceal plagiarism, iThenticate empowers writers, editors, publishers and web content managers to uncover any unauthorized reproduction of published works.
There is no doubt that a new generation of kids are growing up with the internet as a centerpiece of their lives. Whether it be on Twitter or Facebook, teenagers are expressing themselves more and more via the internet. You can tell something is changing when news anchors are constantly ‘tweeting’ to reach a younger generation of viewers.
