Research misconduct applies to all stages of research, including proposing, performing, and reviewing research, and reporting research results.
Plagiarism is defined under the federal regulations and in the Ohio State’s research misconduct policy as “the appropriation of the ideas, processes, results, or words of another person, without giving appropriate credit.” Plagiarism is a growing concern in both the academic and scientific research realms and needs to be avoided at all costs.
Tools are available to screen documents for copied text to ensure that all content is properly cited and to ensure originality of the content. Ohio State licenses an anti-plagiarism software, iThenticate, for use by Ohio State faculty, staff, students.
iThenticate
iThenticate is an anti-plagiarism software for use in screening scholarly research documents for possible copied or plagiarized text. When you use iThenticate to screen a document, the software runs your uploaded document against a database of more than 40 million published articles, web pages and other scholarly content. iThenticate cannot identify plagiarism specifically, instead it identifies text that matches other materials in the database. The user must determine if the matching text represents plagiarized text.
iThenticate is different from TurnitIn, another anti-plagiarism software package licensed by Ohio State. TurnitIn is used for screening academic (course) work products and screens uploaded documents against different databases than iThenticate.
How can I access iThenticate?
Any Ohio State faculty, staff, student, or associate can use iThenticate. In order to use iThenticate, you need to first create an account using your Ohio State credentials. The system is configured to sync with any changes to your account and any reports generated are maintained on the iThenticate's servers.
Additional Information
For questions regarding the misconduct policy, or issues pertaining to misconduct in science or scholarly activities contact: