There is no doubt about the value of multimedia and other resources for sharing the advances in the sciences and the arts of a given discipline. They help to grow awareness and interest in different topics, as a sense of what sounds reasonable and what does not. Good quality of the information is essential, as the aim of most journals expresses openly their commitment to being a reliable and trustful source for presenting confirmed advances and findings, validated enough to be a support for building criteria or as a foundation of further research.
The information published in the journals is generated by the authors and there are several mechanisms, mostly derived from the scientific method, to ensure as possible that the information that is collected with the intention to be communicated fulfills the mentioned requirements. Peer review of the submitted material is a key element, it is often double-blind performed, seeking to be sure that feedback and criticism responses are included in the manuscript and eventually are available to the readers. Revision of the material does not finish after publication, indeed there is a post review conducted by the readers and those that take the information as the base for their own research. Authors and journals are under continuous evaluation by the readers, some of them will confirm or reject the worthiness of the published material and apply their results or submit new manuscripts that follow the same process, so that finally converge, more than agree, and the conclusion will result in new knowledge.
Among the criteria for accepting a paper is the originality, and a sort of tool for evaluating it is known as the ‘Similarity score’, which is the ratio, expressed in percentage, of text in a paper that is found in other sources. This score is becoming one of the acceptance criteria by some journals, as some scoring engines are referred to as plagiarism finders. A high similarity score raises suspicion of plagiarism, which is not, and must not be tolerated, however, other aspects might be considered before concluding about unethical behavior.
There are many reports suggesting the maximum acceptable score of similarity, some admit 15% while others consider up to 25%. If this score means plagiarism by itself, then the admissible score must be 0%. However, a fair review must consider other factors that affect this score and that must be pondered with the request of submission. For instance, it is asked to the authors of manuscripts dealing with the derivation of methods that the framework of assumptions is described and justified in detail. In this case, the contribution of the description to the score could be irrelevant, while it is expected that the justification is not a repetition of something found somewhere else. It is understandable that having concerns about the score might be against the request for sufficient information for duplicating the results.
Therefore, a probable explanation for scores higher than the admissible ones, maybe around 30%, could be the excess of details and failure when summarizing material already published. Plagiarism is not excusable regardless of the scale, and it is assumed that the authors know that so that they do not intend to commit plagiarism; there are some issues that could be addressed by the authors when writing their manuscripts to ensure that the original contribution is not being dissolved by an excessive framework, which is one of the factors that increase this score. The following points have been useful to focus the manuscript on its contribution and originality always that it is not a case of plagiarism, the authors might:
Reduce extensive background. The manuscripts should not provide antecedents further than the strictly necessary for the validation of the reported material.
Reduce detailing standard apparatus and testing. It is more important to describe what is special to the experiments or characterization. Limit the description of well-known techniques to whatever is necessary or different to the research.
Avoid abusing triumphalist sentences of novelty, because they raise the interest of the reviewers, so that finding a high similarity score is unexpected and many times unjustifiable. It is necessary to ensure that referred material provides the framework to show novelty.
Avoid reporting routinary work.
Avoid repeating other papers’ sentences, but with their results inserted.
Summarize and cite details published somewhere else.
The similarity score and its report detailing the found similarities are taken as a general criterion for deciding about its weight in every case. The most important asset of a journal after the authors are the reviewers, who are specialists that provide suitable feedback for editorial decision-making. Their work is highly appreciated and respected as they recognize contribution, similarity, and plagiarism if it happens.
Although the form, which includes word counting, language use and similarity score, is important in the submission of a paper, content is the most serious matter so that everything that is necessary to understand the contribution of the work to the advance of the sciences and the arts of a given subject is discussed in the manuscript. The discussion is the most distinctive section of a paper, since everybody has a different perception of the conducted research as a different form of argumentation for reaching to conclusions. Therefore, any honest writing will show evidence of its originality.
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León
Facultad de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica