The peer-review process is at the heart of the success of scientific publishing. As part of our commitment to the protection and enhancement of the peer-review process, Elsevier has an obligation to assist the scientific community in all aspects of publishing ethics, especially in cases of (suspected) duplicate submission or plagiarism.

Our journal editors frequently ask us how we can support them by using software to detect plagiarism. We take their concerns regarding plagiarism issues very seriously, and we would like to address this need, but it is important to point out that simple or imminent solutions do not exist. We are currently investigating new ways of detecting plagiarism and are exploring the effectiveness of plagiarism-detection software. For example, we are one of the first participants in the CrossCheck pilot, as described below.

Investing in plagiarism-detection software

Cases of suspected plagiarism (or duplicate submission) are rarely limited to the same journal or publisher. More often than not, multiple journals and publishers are involved. Software solutions, therefore, ideally require cooperation between (all) publishing houses. We, together with five other publishers, recently entered into collaboration with CrossRef to develop a system that allows publishers to verify the originality of published works. The service is called CrossCheck. And involves software from   iParadigms, known for providing plagiarism software to the academic world. CrossRef members co-operate to maintain a single database of published articles (perhaps later also to include submitted articles) against which checking can take place.

After a successful six months pilot with eight leading publishers, Elsevier has integrated CrossCheck into its editorial workflows as part of its efforts to support the peer review process and assist the scientific community in all aspects of publishing ethics. Elsevier will contribute nearly nine million journal articles to the CrossCheck database, which is launching with a commitment of over 20 million journal articles from publishers including the Association for Computing Machinery, American Society of Neuroradiology, BMJ Publishing Group, Elsevier, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, International Union of Crystallography, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, Sage, Informa UK (Taylor & Francis), and Wiley Blackwell.

Finally, at Elsevier, we devote many resources to supporting our editors in following up on suspected plagiarism, duplicate submissions, or falsifications. We provide support for more than 400 cases per year. We are committed to continuing this level of support, irrespective of the outcomes of the CrossCheck pilot. Although we estimate only 0.1% of submitted articles are ever suspect--with considerable variation of occurrence between different academic areas--a workable software solution for plagiarism detection can lower the burden on our editors and pay off in terms of resources required to detect plagiarism. We recognize this burden and are committed to searching for the best solutions.

One of Elsevier's core tasks is supporting our editors by supporting and fostering the peer-review process. We have an ongoing commitment to safeguard the ethics of publishing and a responsibility to strive to prevent or minimize all aspects of unethical publishing behavior. Whether software can help in the detection and prevention of plagiarism is the core question that the CrossCheck pilot seeks to answer. We will keep you informed as we explore and discover new ways and means of solving this important issue.