Defining and responding to plagiarism

ABSTRACT A clear definition of plagiarism and the ability to classify it into more or less serious forms would help editors and publishers to devise policies to handle this problem. Text‐matching software is a useful tool for measuring the extent of text copying but it cannot detect plagiarized tables or figures, plagiarism of ideas, or plagiarism in translation. Furthermore, a working definition of plagiarism in relation to research reports needs to take into account factors such as the originality of the copied material, its position in the report, the adequacy of referencing, and the intention of the authors as well as the extent of the copying. This article considers all these factors and proposes possible definitions of major and minor plagiarism in relation to scholarly publications which might be used as the basis for anti‐plagiarism policies in conjunction with resources such as the COPE flowcharts.